The 9...a5 Move and a Chess DVD's Promise: The Bayonet Attack Problem in the King's Indian Defense

In 2026, at a small coffee shop on Nguyen Thien Thuat Street in Nha Trang, a retired chess coach laid out a position on move nine in front of me. Both queensides had traded nearly every piece, the kingside stood untouched, and only small pieces remained on the board, waiting for their fate. He pointed at the black pawn on a5: "This move isn't beautiful. But it keeps the player inside the game." The board was empty, yet the applause of 2026 still echoed in every old move. That year, in the Argentine seaside city of Mar del Plata, the Gligoric-Bronstein game brought this variation into the books. The King's Indian Defense, Mar del Plata variation, is a system where Black deliberately concedes the center to White early, then reclaims it with ...Nc6 and ...e5. Four decades later, it became the weapon of attacking players: Black drills a hole in the center, and the two sides charge at each other like a boxing match. Chess does not stand still. When White found the Bayonet Attack — the move 9.b4 — Black's queenside began to hurt. White pushes the pawn to b4, opens an attacking thrust against Black's structure, and forces Black to answer at once. For years, the orthodox reply was 9...Nh5: Black jumps the knight to the board's edge, accepts an open position, accepts entering forced lines both sides must memorize. That is the path of the well-drilled player. Then a chess product in the ChessBase Fritztrainer style appeared, advertising a different answer: 9...a5. What is notable is that the pitch does not promise a new move. 9...a5 is a long-known branch, not a novelty. What it promises is a change in the character of the game. After 9...Nh5, the position opens up, the lines become forcing, and, per the pitch, the computer once again becomes important. After 9...a5, the game enters a strategic struggle, with few concrete lines, for the player who wants to think for himself. The pitch places its entire value on one axis: human versus computer. It implies the machine cannot handle such complex strategic positions. But that is pre-AlphaZero thinking. Since around 2026, neural-network engines have played the King's Indian Defense in ways that make top players sit down and look again. Handling long-term strategic positions is now a machine strength, not a weakness. The phrase "computers do not understand" is dated marketing language. Technically, this product offers not a single number. No ACPL, no win rate, no draw rate, no sample games. The promise of "very few concrete lines" comes without data. And there is no author name, no title, no results in the Mar del Plata variation. A serious buyer wants to see the author's credentials and a few sample variations with engine evaluations before spending money — both are absent. Here I must say something about source quality. In the file I read, the document's title is a team-round report from Samarkand: "R2 (open): Despite close calls, all top teams grab wins." The body is entirely about the 9...a5 DVD. The two are unrelated. With my documentary-film experience, I treat this as a red flag. A title and body that diverge mean the data-assembly stage had a problem, and anyone citing it again must verify the original source first. So where does the real value of 9...a5 lie? Its genuine strength is practical steerability. For club or IM-level players, a low-theory branch that allows independent thinking rather than memorization is a useful product. That is a real, durable market, if unglamorous: selling "answers to a fashionable line." But we must be blunt. 9...a5 is a secondary branch, not the main line; the main line remains 9...Nh5. The claim of "equal chances" is a positional judgment, not a theoretical edge. And the supposed "antidote" can still be met by a well-prepared White player finding play. The Mar del Plata remains sharp by nature; no line removes calculation. The pitch that "if Black knows what to do, things quickly become dangerous for White" is a typical exaggeration. Every board I have sat at holds a secret door, and the entrance is always a person. There is something more worrying than a bad purchase: a mindset. When a product teaches players that the computer does not understand this position, it feeds an old prejudice and pushes learners away from the strongest tool they have. To me, that is the biggest risk — not the money spent, but hundreds of hours of study pointed the wrong way. In the age of 30-second video, I spent three months listening to a man talk about a chess game from 2026. I remember the words of the old coach in Nha Trang. He said the move 9...a5 kept the player inside the game. But staying in the game does not mean holding the advantage. In chess, as in sport, some choices exist only because they let us continue — not because they win. The wise player is the one who can tell the two apart before believing a promise.