Viewing the Grunfeld

I have always imagined the Grunfeld as a variation of the KID. Sorry about that Chess Aficionados, I am sure that made some actually good chess players cringe.

Now I see it as a d4 d5 variant, a version of QG decline, one if I play d4 and c4, black decides to defend d5 with Nf6 instead of e6.

I used to play the Grunfeld all the time when White played 1.d4. Unlike the KID, I want my counter play right away.

@sundown316 said
I used to play the Grunfeld all the time when White played 1.d4. Unlike the KID, I want my counter play right away.

That is why I looked into the Leningrad Defense.

@eladar said
I have always imagined the Grunfeld as a variation of the KID. Sorry about that Chess Aficionados, I am sure that made some actually good chess players cringe.

Now I see it as a d4 d5 variant, a version of QG decline, one if I play d4 and c4, black decides to defend d5 with Nf6 instead of e6.

In the purest sense, 1 d4 d5 2 c4 Nf6 is not yet a Gruenfeld, and is considered a little dubious after 3. cxd5.

it is still occasionally rolled out by strong players, but the statistics still seem to confirm that it is inferior, and black has a host of better choices.

@Paul-Leggett

If you look at the rhp results you will find it winning. Black wins more games than white in the lines that I saw.

@eladar said
@Paul-Leggett

If you look at the rhp results you will find it winning. Black wins more games than white in the lines that I saw.

I would hardly count on RHP results as a measure of a good opening.

After the simple and straightforward 3. cxd5, White win 0ver 80% of the time in the chessbase database, which suggests that I may have been wrong- instead of "a little dubious" I just should have said "dubious". That's splitting linguistic hairs, but 80% is a pretty strong number.

@Paul-Leggett

Yeah I figured that the results were based on black being generally better players here.

But as green pawn pointed out years ago what is really bad at higher levels can score realky well at lower levels because weaker players do not know how to exploit the bad play.

I really enjoy blitz games now, but for a different reason, it gives me opportunities to mess around with openings.

I tried treating grunfeld like a kid, yeah black taking on c4 really screws up my defense of the d4 pawn. It was no bueno. d5..cxd5 I need to smash that through my skull.