Chess Developments: The Grünfeld

Populariteten til Grünfeldindisk viser seg ved at 48 av de 51 hovedpartiene i denne 400 siders ferske boka er spilt i 2009 eller senere. Et nytt systematisk og innholdsrikt verk av IM David Vigorito.

FORFATTERENS INTRODUKSJON:

I have been playing tournament chess for more than 25 years, and I have two ob- servations to note about the subject of this book, the Grünfeld. Firstly, I have al- most exclusively played the closed openings as White, and have always found the Grünfeld to be quite annoying to play against. I know I am not alone in this feel- ing. Secondly, the Grünfeld has never been in such excellent theoretical shape as it is as I write these words.

Most of the top players in the world include the Grünfeld in their repertoires, in- cluding Carlsen, Anand, Aronian, Topalov, Kamsky, Caruana, Grischuk, Ivanchuk, Gelfand, and Giri. A special mention should be made of Peter Svidler, who has played the Grünfeld with great consistency at the highest level for 20+ years. Of course, Kasparov, and Fischer before him, played the Grünfeld successfully as well.

Here in the United States GM Sergey Kudrin employs the Grünfeld exclusively against players at all levels. I realized the theoretical problems White faced when I faced Kudrin with White a few months ago. Despite my work on this book, I strug- gled mightily to decide where to look for an advantage. After choosing a line I had little experience in, I messed up my move order within a dozen moves and had to struggle to draw.

Writing this book was a very different experience from my previous Chess Developments book on the Sicilian Dragon. The Dragon is very narrow and important games are played only periodically. In contrast, the Grünfeld is an opening where almost every line is important and in a constant state of flux. Add to that its popularity at grandmaster level, and one will find that there are important games played every week and sometimes every day.

The explosive popularity of the Grünfeld required me to be rather strict in the lines that I covered. When I started this project the Exchange Variation with 7 Bc4 was very popular. Black has several ways to counter that, so this is by far the largest chapter in the book. The Exchange Variations with 7 Be3 and 7 Nf3 are also covered. The latter was considered to be absolutely critical at the turn of the millennium, but interest has subsided a bit as Black has worked out several reasonable defensive schemes.

At the time of this writing the Russian Variation is very popular. In fact this chapter was rewritten only a few months after it was completed to reflect the on-going developments in the fashionable lines. Lines with Bf4 and Bg5 have never been considered the most critical, but they are nevertheless important so they have their own chapters.

The chapter on the Fianchetto variation is the one where I had to be the most ruthless. I have focussed exclusively on the main lines with ...Nxd5 which have shown the most developments in the last few years. Another highly fashionable line is the Anti-Grünfeld with 3 f3 which is covered in the last chapter. Here too I had to narrow the coverage to games with a ‘true’ Grünfeld approach with 3...d5. I would like to thank my wife Heather for all of her love and support as I locked myself in my office to work on this project; IM Joe Fang, for his proof-reading; and GM John Emms, for never giving me a stern word as this book became more and more overdue.

David Vigorito, Andover, Massachusetts, June 2013