I was reading Kasparov's "Revolution in the 70s" recently and wondered: what would a book called "Revolution in the 00s" talk about? I think there's no question that the extraordinary increase in strength of chess software over the last decade and its global availability has allowed us to reexamine every nook and cranny of opening theory, and I wonder what the most significant findings have been so far. I don't follow the entire spectrum of theory (I play 1.d4), nor was I watching opening developments in the 90s, so my perspective is
extremely limited. Nevertheless I did come up with the following things (in no particular order):
1. The rise of 1.d4 as White's first move of choice at top level.
2. Kramnik's construction of the Berlin Wall.
3. The death (Kramnik-Kasparov) and rebirth (Anand-Gelfand) of the Grunfeld.
4. The explosion in popularity of the Catalan.
5. The emergence of the Slow Slav (4.e3) as a serious opening.
6. The popularization of the Anti-Moscow Gambit.
7. The discovery of White's dynamic chances against the Queen's Indian. (Topalov's games, and especially the 4.g3 Ba6 5.Qc2 Bb7 6.Bg2 c5 7.d5 sacrifice)
8. The revival of the Modern Benoni.
9. The revival of the Tarrasch. (and more recently, the Semi-Tarrasch)
10. The establishment of the MacCutcheon as the main line of the Classical French.
11. The establishment of the Advance as White's main weapon against the Caro-Kann.
12. The development of systems involving ...a6 in the Pirc, Modern and the Dragon.
13. The discovery that various gambits are more playable than previously thought. (Albin, Blumenfeld, Schara-Hennig, Morra, Schliemann, etc.; and people thought computers were going to
kill gambit play)
Now it's your turn! Notice I haven't said anything about the Sicilian, since I don't really know what "revolutionary" things happened after the English Attack and Rossolimo exploded in popularity in the 90s (or was the latter a more recent phenomenon? You tell me.)
Have fun