9...a5 and the Promise of Cracking the Bayonet: A King's Indian DVD Without Data

Four in the morning in Binh Duong, the coffee still hot, I rewound the game and stopped at move nine. White's pawn landed on b4. The whole queenside seemed to have been poured an extra block of concrete, pushing Black's space back. On the other side, Black took a long breath: the knight jumped to h5, the f-pawn tore open the kingside, and both sides threw themselves into a race to the death — whoever opened the door first would win. There was no room for hesitation in that position. That ninth move has its own name: the Bayonet Attack, a bayonet thrust straight into the face of the King's Indian.

A few days later I came across an advertisement. A training product presented 9...a5 as the antidote to exactly the position I had just watched, with a very familiar promise attached: after this move, chess would no longer be a memory contest. I read it three times, because above that blurb sat a completely different headline — about a team event in Samarkand, where the strong teams all won after close calls. The two texts had nothing to do with each other, spliced into a single package. People usually overlook that small detail. I do not.

The King's Indian, Mar del Plata variation, sits in the E97–E99 range of the ECO classification — that classification is mine, not the brochure's. The name Mar del Plata comes from the tournament held in Argentina in 2026, where this structure took shape. Black accepts ceding the centre from the start, retreats to build up, then counterattacks with ...e5 and ...Nc6, while both sides push pawns on opposite wings. White attacks the queenside, Black attacks the kingside, and the game is usually decided by who is one tempo faster.

The Bayonet Attack is White's 9.b4 answer. The move expands queenside space, threatens b5, and forces Black to choose among several plans. The main practical reply is 9...Nh5: the knight leaps to h5, hits f4, and drives the game into concrete, calculable, verifiable lines. The product proposes another direction — 9...a5, striking directly at the b4-pawn and steering the game into a slow strategic wrestling match with few forcing lines.

The most appealing part of the pitch lies in how it sets human against machine. According to the material, 9...Nh5 "opens the position, forces the lines and makes computer analysis important again", while 9...a5 "leads to sound positions with very few concrete lines". The product claims chances are equal for both sides, and that computers often do not know how to handle such complex strategic positions.

I have been in this trade long enough to smell an argument gone stale. The line "computers don't understand" was persuasive in the era before neural-network engines. Today, the long-term strategic positions of the King's Indian are food that modern engines handle quite comfortably. That is marketing language from a bygone period, no longer a technical claim intact in its value.

The move 9...a5 has existed in theory for a long time. It is a known branch, ranked behind the main reply 9...Nh5 in the system. The material claims no novelty; it merely presents this plan as a practical antidote. In other words, the product's value is psychological and practical rather than theoretically superior. There is nothing wrong with that. It just needs to be said honestly.

The product also targets a very specific buyer: players who like to think for themselves instead of memorising. That is identity-based selling, and it works. But behind that promise lies a large void: the entire material offers not a single figure. No win rate, no average centipawn loss, no sample game, no author name, no title, no results. An opening-theory product without data is like a contract without clauses: all you can do is trust the voice of the seller.

Based on my experience tracking and rewinding hundreds of King's Indian games, I always ask the first question about the source: who says so, across how many games, and under what playing conditions. Without those three answers, any endorsement remains just an endorsement. Sixty days of listening to recordings, I imagined the sound of pieces touching the board in games no one remembers anymore — and I understood that a memory of a move cannot replace data about that move.

Here is a contrarian angle worth pausing on. We like to believe the King's Indian is the romantic flag of those who resist machines — a terrain of intuition, of understanding, of humanity. But the King's Indian's share of elite classical games has narrowed markedly in the engine era. It survives as a surprise weapon, not as a daily foundation. The belief that one DVD can reverse that trend is a form of idealising the past. The game ended long ago, but the sound of pieces touching the board still echoes in my memory.

The promise of "few forcing lines" also deserves a discount. Mar del Plata remains sharp by nature. No line truly removes the need to calculate; some lines simply redirect calculation elsewhere. A well-prepared White player can still find play, and in a branch as heavily excavated as the Bayonet, an antidote has a short shelf life if the opponent bothers to analyse it again.

What bothers me most is not on the board at all. The headline about the team event in Samarkand being attached to a product blurb is a matter of information integrity. Since 2026, when I was commentating on chess for VTC, I have made it a habit to check sources before quoting anything. To me, the mismatch between headline and body is the first red flag. When the head and the body of a text tell two different stories, the suspicious thing is not the board, but the person who arranged the information.

So what should be tracked in the coming period? The answer lies in elite classical games: if 9...a5 appears in games at the 2700+ level, that is a signal confirming or refuting the promise. And if the Bayonet Attack keeps its fashionable place in the opening tree, the product's window of value stays open — but only for buyers who understand what they are buying.

The sixty-four squares are still there, silent and fair. Time does not fade love for the board, it only changes its colour. And if there is one lesson I want to keep after all those days of rewinding recordings, it is this: the true value of a move lies not in beating the machine, but in forcing the opponent to think for themselves. That is something no product can buy on a player's behalf.