9...a5 Won't Save the King's Indian: One DVD, One Broken Title, and the Buyer's Trap

In my trade, I have misread a player's name, then read the position correctly when the slow-motion replay appeared before my eyes. This time, what I misread was not a person's name, but a product's name.

A chess opening DVD has just been released with the familiar promise: it is the "antidote" to the Bayonet Attack, the weapon every White player wants to hurl at your King's Indian Defense. The move being sold is 9...a5. But when I opened the description, the headline was about a team round in Samarkand where "all top teams won."

The two texts have nothing to do with each other.

That is when the red light went on in my head. Not because 9...a5 is bad - it isn't. But because a chess-teaching product that does not sign its author, does not offer a single sample game, and borrows its title from another news item, deserves suspicion. When the seller is wrong on the first line, you have the right to doubt every line that follows.

I am 60. I have hosted chess podcasts for the Indian market long enough. I have commented enough to know one thing: a good move survives without advertising, and a move that lives only on advertising will sooner or later die on the board.

Context: the black hole called Mar del Plata

So you don't have to reach for a reference book, let me retell the background. The King's Indian Defense is a system where Black deliberately concedes the centre from the start, only to counterattack that very centre. The basic moves: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Nf3 O-O 6.Be2 e5. Black builds a wall, then waits for White to swell until he chokes himself.

The Mar del Plata variation is the sharpest branch of this system: Black brings the knight to c6, pushes e5, and both sides launch a race of "who attacks the other wing first." The classic structure: 7.O-O Nc6 8.d5 Ne7. White freezes the centre with the d5 pawn, Black crouches and counterattacks. This is the land of players like Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov and Boris Gelfand - men unafraid to play chess with half the board in the opponent's hands.

The Bayonet Attack appears when White plays 9.b4. A sideways shove. White begins the queenside attack before the kingside race even starts. The b4 pawn attacks c5, preparing to threaten Black's pawn structure. Black's orthodox reply has long been 9...Nh5: it opens the position, forces White into concrete calculation, and turns the game into a sequence of forced moves that only an engine and a memorizer can survive.

That is exactly the sore spot the DVD aims at. And that is why it is worth dissecting.

I have said before that silent applause can kill emotion, but it cannot kill strategy. An opening product is the same: it can sell you a feeling of safety, but a feeling of safety cannot calculate move eighteen.

The analysis: three problems of one promise

The product sells 9...a5 as an escape from the forced hell of 9...Nh5. On the surface, this is an attractive strategic claim: instead of diving into concrete lines that demand superhuman memory, Black plays 9...a5, triggers a strategic battle, few forced lines, and lets both sides think for themselves.

Problem one: 9...a5 is not an invention. It is a known sideline, a secondary remedy, not the main move. The main move in the Bayonet Attack remains 9...Nh5. The DVD does not claim to have found a new move - it only says 9...a5 receives little attention. That fact matters: it turns the product from a "discovery" into a "selective reminder." That's fine - a good reminder still has value. But don't let anyone sell you the feeling that you are holding a secret. The secret is not in the move. The secret, if any, is in the person who knows how to use it.

Problem two, and this is the real point: the product offers not a single number. No ACPL figure - average centipawn loss against the engine's best move. No win rate, draw rate, or usage rate for 9...a5 in major events. No sample game. No engine evaluation. Only assertion.

In my trade, what do we call an assertion with no numbers? I call it noise. And this is transfer-window season, a time when noise always beats signal, a time when every studio has someone selling you a miracle. What I need from an opening product is not a miracle. What I need is three numbers: how often it appears, how often it wins, and where it breaks.

Problem three, and I think this is where the product shows its age: it claims that "computers often do not know how to handle these complex strategic positions." That was true of engines circa 2026, before the AlphaZero era. With today's neural-network engines, the King's Indian Defense - precisely the kind of long-term, strategic position computers used to be "blind" to - is one of the systems they play best. Modern computers do not need you to teach them how to play Black in the Mar del Plata. They teach you back.

When a product sells the obsolescence of computers, it is selling you nostalgia for a time when a chess player could still hide behind complexity. That nostalgia is beautiful, but it has no tactical value.

Now to the numbers - or rather, the absence of them. I built a dry comparison table between the two choices, based on what the text itself says:

| Criterion | 9...Nh5 (main line) | 9...a5 (the advertised antidote) | | --- | --- | --- | | Character | Forcing, concrete moves | Strategic position, few concrete lines | | Player requirement | Accurate memory | Independent thinking | | Role of engines | Important again | "Computers don't understand" | | Data evidence | Verified in professional play | None | | Author identity | Known | Unnamed |

This table says what I cannot say in one sentence: its two halves need no data comparison, because one half already has data, and the other half has only a promise.

I remember 2026, when the pandemic closed every stadium. In that empty stadium I found a tactical diagram lying still under a seat instead of the roar of a crowd. Football without spectators is boring not because of the players, but because the coaches are teaching robots. I applied that exact lesson to chess: when you strip away all the noise, structure is all that remains. And the structure of 9...a5, stripped of noise, is a legitimate branch but nowhere near as gentle as advertised.

What the advertising doesn't tell you

Based on my experience watching thousands of games, every promise of "less memorization" in the opening obeys one rule: the quieter the position at first, the sharper it becomes later. 9...a5 does not eliminate forced moves. It only delays them. And a delayed forced move is exactly where a well-prepared White player wins. Because once Black fails to force the position with precise moves, White has time to turn queenside space into a grindstone.

Remember this: the Bayonet Attack is one of the most deeply analysed branches of modern chess. It is not virgin land. Anyone who plays 9.b4 as White has already seen 9...a5 in a database, in any serious preparation session. Which means the so-called antidote is really just a move your opponent already knows. And a move your opponent already knows is not an antidote - it is an offer to negotiate.

This is where I have to be honest with myself. There is another reading, and it is kinder than mine.

By that reading, this product does not aim at grandmasters. It aims at club players - people who play chess to play, not to recite. For them, a stable position that does not demand a twenty-move forced sequence is a genuine gift. That is a legitimate market, and it exists. I don't deny it.

But even at my kindest, I still have to ask: why would someone selling a genuine gift borrow a false title? Why not sign your name? Why not offer a sample game so the buyer can verify for himself?

The contrarian angle: the frightening thing is not the move, it's the frame

Mistakes are not frightening; bending down to pick up the tape at 2 a.m. is what makes a forecaster. And in this case, what I picked up was not a wrong move, but a wrong frame.

The frame sells you an old dream: the dream that strategy can escape calculation. It cannot. Strategy and calculation in elite chess are not two roads. They are the same road, only at different speeds. A product that promises you an escape from calculation is selling you relief, not strength.

And here is where I see the real signal, lying beneath the surface. The title comes from Samarkand; the body is about a DVD. This is not a small joke. This is an information-integrity problem. If the seller cannot match a headline to a body, what is the probability that they verified every variation of 9...a5 with an engine? I won't answer for you. I will only pose the question.

In 44 years of watching this industry, I learned that every buyer's trap wears the same face: it does not promise a move, it promises a new person. The buyer does not buy an opening line. The buyer buys an image of himself, the chess player who "thinks for himself" rather than the memorizer. This advertisement strikes that image, not the board.

A player's agent is the biggest hidden cost in football, and in chess, the seller of an opening product is the biggest hidden cost of study time. The noise they create distorts the market. I have said this for years, and I still say it: follow the money, follow the contracts, follow the agent's moves. Applied here: follow who sells, to whom they sell, and why they hide their name.

Takeaway: a testable prediction

I commit to a testable prediction. Within the next twelve months, 9...a5 will not penetrate elite classical games at the 2700+ level, because 9...Nh5 remains the objective choice, and prepared White players still have answers. Instead, the move will live a quiet life in clubs and amateur events - exactly where the DVD sells it.

If I am wrong, if a grandmaster uses it to beat a well-prepared White opponent in any classical game in the next year, I will come back, reopen the tape, and say on camera that I misread. I promise that, because it is the only way I keep the right to ask questions.

And to the buyer: before you pay for an antidote, ask three questions. Who is the author? Where are the sample games? And why does the cover not match the contents?