Grandmaster Repertoire 8 – The Grunfeld Defence Volume One

“Boris Avrukh’s two-volume work The Grünfeld Defense, published recently by Quality Chess, is more than 600 pages long. The Israeli grandmaster presents ideas from Black’s point of view, mixing known games with many original analyses. It is a wonderful Grünfeld manual that gives tournament players advice on where to move and what to avoid.”

GM Lubomir Kavalek

“Avrukh does a fabulous job of piecing together a repertoire, presenting it in digestible format, and then analyzing the chosen lines in incredible detail. All while offering hundreds of improvements over existing theory… The variety of moves goes from simple alternatives to outright improvements that change the evaluation of the line as a whole. The latter are obviously the ones that make the study and subsequent use of the lines exciting. Playing against a reasonably well-prepared opponent in this opening can be difficult, but facing them packing the armory in these volumes will be a whole different ball game.

Carsten Hansen

For the strong to elite players who employ the main lines of the Grünfeld, these books are must-buys. Such players will love these books and refer to them repeatedly. Those ranking just below that will also be able to benefit, while others will likely do better with something aimed at their level.

My assessment of these books: 6/6 Stars”