Quote:Gambit is releasing a book on the Grivias sicilian in August.
http://www.badbishop.com/gambit/books/grivas.html It's 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Db6. I didn't even know it was called the Grivas Sicilian. The book is written by Grivas himself.
What's the status of this line? (Well, reading the book is one way to find out.) Looking briefly in games from TWIC it appears to do well. I seldom see it at high level though.
Is it always an independent line? Are there common transpositions to other Sicilian lines?
I've never played this line, but I looked at it in some detail last year. There are some issues of move order early on to resolve, but it seems that In most games Black is able to reach a sort of Scheveningen position, without having had to worry about the Keres Attack, English Attack or the Velimirovic.
The main snags are that a) in some lines the Qb6 is misplaced, preventing ...b5; b) in other lines, White's Be3 wins a tempo on the identical line stemming from e.g. a Qb6 Sozin, or maybe a Taimanov in which White plays Bd3 and Be3. Some apparently think that's a price worth paying to a) "demobilise" the strong Nd4 and b) have a good chance of reaching a familar type of Scheveningen middlegame position, thus gaining the usual Sicilian "three results" game without having to learn huge amounts of theory.
Grivas himself has played this in nearly 100 published games, with a healthy plus score for Black. It is also popular with some Armenians, such as Akopian and Anastasian. Golod and Milov also play it.