Just wondering why there are such a lack of high quality Grünfeld books for Black in the past few years? The Grünfeld Defence is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, defence to 1. d4 regardless of ELO, as well as one of the most topical defences to 1. d4. The only recent book that comes close to exhaustive is Dembo's "Play the Grünfeld", which is a good book, albeit starting to get quite outdated as it is now three years old.

Other openings that are equally or less topical than the Grünfeld, such as the Ruy Lopez Marshall Gambit have many recent opening books, such as Attacking the Spanish (Brunello 2009), Fighting the Ruy Lopez (Pavlovic 2009), Understanding the Marshall Gambit (Vigorito 2010), etc. For the Najdorf there's Play the Najdorf (Rizzitano 2010), Grandmaster Repertoire 6 (Ftacnik 2010), etc. But why not many Grünfeld books? I imagine a few GMs would try to write their own books on this fascinating opening, but apparently the next exhaustive Grünfeld book will be Quality Chess's Grandmaster Repertoire 8: The Grünfeld Defence (Avrukh 201?).

  The problem seems to me to be information overload.  You have a choice - Firstly, you can take the Quality Chess 'GM Repertoire' approach where you say size doesn't matter and include everything.  Secondly, you can take the Everyman approach and present either a practical repertoire, or a slimmed down look at the 2700 lines.

The problem with the Grunfeld is that it is becoming harder and harder to present low-theory/practical alternatives.  Everything seems to be critical in one way or another.  Even the Ftacnik DVD is 7 hours long!

That really only leaves the GM Repertoire approach and the problem there is finding authors who have both the time to commit to the project and the willingness to come up with/give away dozens of opening novelties.

Hoppers wrote on 06/27/10 at 18:35:39:

The problem seems to me to be information overload.  You have a choice - Firstly, you can take the Quality Chess 'GM Repertoire' approach where you say size doesn't matter and include everything.  Secondly, you can take the Everyman approach and present either a practical repertoire, or a slimmed down look at the 2700 lines. The problem with the Grunfeld is that it is becoming harder and harder to present low-theory/practical alternatives.  Everything seems to be critical in one way or another.  Even the Ftacnik DVD is 7 hours long! That really only leaves the GM Repertoire approach and the problem there is finding authors who have both the time to commit to the project and the willingness to come up with/give away dozens of opening novelties.

And even then most of the book will become irrelevant or need repairs in a year or two! Such is life in the sharp lane.  :(

Two first rate Gruenfeld books are being written for the Black: one by Avrukh (Quality Chess) and one by Delchev (Chess Stars).