The Grünfeld Defence is well known to be one of Black’s best and most challenging responses to 1.d4, and has long been a favourite choice of elite players including Kasparov, Svidler, Caruana, Vachier-Lagrave and many more. As with many openings, however, it can be difficult to navigate the ever-expanding jungle of games and theory.
Playing the Grünfeld offers an ideal solution for practical players. Alexey Kovalchuk is a young Russian talent with expert knowledge of the Grünfeld, and in this book he shares his best ideas to form a complete, coherent and combative repertoire for Black. In addition to theoretical soundness, efforts have been made to avoid variations leading to early forced draws, as well as those in which Black allows his king to be attacked at an early stage.
Contents
004 Symbols & Bibliography
005 Foreword by GM Nikita Petrov
006 Introduction
Third Move Deviations
015 1) 3.f3
036 2) Fianchetto System
Sidelines
074 3) Rare 4th & 5th Moves
090 4) Systems with e2-e3
118 5) Bg5 Systems
163 6) Bf4 Systems
201 7) Lines with Qa4+
219 8) Russian System
246 9) 8.e5 & 8.Be2!
4.cxd5 Nxd5
290 10) Rare Lines
316 11) 5.Bd2
5.e4 Nxc3 6.bxc3 Bg7
332 12) Exchange Variation
368 13) Be3 Systems
398 14) 7.Nf3
443 15) 7.Bc4
476 16) 11.dxc5!
498 Variation Index