3 ... c6 (& eventual ... d5), is it KID, Grunfeld, or something else?
Thank you very much for sharing this game, Samurai-X. I found it very interesting. I fell in love with the Grunfeld decades ago when I was young and have been playing it ever since, but in recent months I've been trying it with c6. (Bear in mind that this is at club level when you read this.) I've also been trying this system in reverse with the white pieces as well. I call this, following Hartston in his old book The Grunfeld (an old Batsford publication), The Grunfeld Slav (the c6 move giving it its Slavic look), and the reverse The Grunfeld Slav Attack.
The purpose of ...c6, as opposed to the more immediate ...c5, is (in the way I've been playing it) is to neutralise white's fianchetto'd bishop, prevent Nb5, support ... b5 (once you've got your rook off a8), and give some room for your queen to get out on the queenside. The knight is played by black to d7 (as Svidler does in this game) to support either an eventual d5 or an eventual (in conjunction with a rook on e8) e5. Interestingly Svidler makes neither pawn advance (c5 or e5). I really liked his early dxc4 too.
While I've been told again and again that "your so-called Grunfeld Slav system won't be very effective in masters' games where white will be able to make black's game quite passive," I've actually found it to work very well at sub-2000 level, where it has produced tactically dynamic and strategically interesting positions, and I have also been quite pleased with the results. I'm therefore especially pleased to see it work here at the top level.
Thanks for the excellent responses! Looking at the 365chess database, I'm seeing this move ... c6 with only a 16-22% win rate for Black. That's surprisingly low given the very solid strategical basis of the ... c6 move. One of the only immediately apparent weaknesses of ... c6 is that it takes away the knight's most natural development square.
White taking on d5 (cxd5) seems like an effective and simple idea. Black has to take back with the knight if he wants to preserve the strategical aspect of ... c6. But that removes one of two of Black's central pawns and allows for White to play d4, creating a classical pawn set-up. After that, I assume White will wait for the perfect moment to play d5 and destroy the ... c6 set-up in order to improve his light-squared bishop. This variation by White just makes it seems easy for White to break down this ... c6 set-up and, maybe, that's one of the aspects that has this system, which looks very appealing strategically speaking, have such a low win percentage for Black.