Attacking Game from the Bundesliga
What is in a Name?
Greek grandmaster, trainer and author Efstratios Grivas (born 1966) published an opening book in 2005 entitled ‘A Complete Guide to the Grivas Sicilian’ which dealt with a popular sideline of the Sicilian involving an early Qb6 by Black.
While I have some reservations about any famous player lending his name to any opening system, Grivas has probably played this system more times than any other grandmaster and his book remains one of the very best analytic treatments on the book market — even til this day.
Grivas painstakingly breaks down the strategies that both sides can employ and subjects each to a concrete and systematic study.
I myself have occasionally dabbled with this system during the past 45 years — before it even had a name — and as White I have encountered it even more often! The simple fact remains that it is an important opening system.
This past weekend at the German Bundesliga the Uzbekistani grandmaster Rustam Kasimdzhanov played an important game against the Grivas System, crushing his opponent — Austrian IM Peter Schreiner (2445) in just 26 moves. Let’s take a closer look at this game.
(I use the RPB plugin for demonstrating this game. Just click on any move and a floating diagram will appear which is useful to follow the variations.)
gm Kasimdzhanov,R – im Schreiner,P
Bundesliga 23.11.2019
(1-0)
