The 9...a5 Move and the DVD's Trick: Does the Bayonet Attack Really Have an Antidote?

A headline about round two of a team event in Samarkand. A body about an instructional opening DVD. Two fragments glued together that have nothing to do with each other. I once mispronounced a player's name, then read the position correctly when the slow-motion replay appeared before my eyes — and this time, what made me put down my pen was not a move, but a headline lying about itself.

I open with source transparency before I say a word about the King's Indian Defense. When the head and body of a report do not match, every figure behind it must be viewed with double the suspicion. That empty stadium years ago, I found the tactical diagram lying quietly under the seat instead of the roar of the crowd. The same here: what is valuable is not what people show off, but what they accidentally reveal.

The real subject is a move called 9...a5, sold as an antidote to the Bayonet Attack.

The King's Indian Defense is a classic hypermodern system: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6, with Black conceding the center at once and winning it back by counterattack. The Mar del Plata is its sharpest version, where Black pushes ...Nc6 and ...e5 and both sides launch a race to attack on opposite wings; the ECO code falls roughly between E97 and E99. To be clear, that ECO range is my own classification, not wording present in the original text.

Modern White usually answers with the Bayonet Attack, the move 9.b4, expanding on the queenside and forcing Black to choose. Black's orthodox reply is 9...Nh5 — sharp, forcing, leading to concrete lines where half a move of faulty memory loses the whole game. And 9...a5, the move this product advertises, is a secondary branch that has sat in the books for a long time.

What stands out is the positioning. The product does not promise a new move. It promises a change of character: from the forcing, concrete play of 9...Nh5 to the strategic, low-memorization play of 9...a5. The move 9...a5 challenges the b4-pawn and steers the game into a closed, maneuvering battle.

That is a psychological promise, and I understand why it appeals. Club players are tired of swapping memories across the board. A branch that lets them think with their own head has real pull, especially when most modern opening books sell them the opposite: memory.

But look at what is not said. Not one ACPL figure. Not one win rate or draw rate. Not one sample game. Not one author's name. An instructional opening product that cannot cite a single game by its own teacher — where exactly is its real value? That was the first question I asked, and the only one the marketing dodges.

I asked the one thing anyone selling an opening must answer: where is the sample game? My question did not sound like a woman, but their evasive answer did not sound like a man. No sample game, no name, no score — only a promise. And in my trade, a promise does not count as data.

The marketing rests on a human-versus-engine contrast. By that account, 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". It is the ChessBase-style Fritztrainer template: selling "an answer to a fashionable line", selling a sense of self-reliance to amateur players.

And this is where my suspicion starts.

The marketing rests on a dated premise. The sentence "computers often do not know how to handle these complex strategic positions" is a legacy of the pre-AlphaZero era. Since neural-network engines took over, they handle the long-term positions of the King's Indian far better than that sentence implies. In 2026, when global sport froze, I spent two weeks replaying twenty World Cup games to test exactly this kind of claim. The lesson repeats: whoever says "the machine does not understand" is usually selling you something the machine understood long ago.

There is a more concrete technical risk. 9...a5 is a branch far too familiar to well-prepared White players. An "antidote" survives only until the other side finishes analyzing it — roughly one theory cycle. In a region as trampled as the Bayonet, that lifespan is usually short. My point is not that 9...a5 is bad. It is legitimate, it is sound, it has a place. The problem is that the promise far exceeds the delivery.

The tactical blind spot lies in the "equal chances" claim. That is a positional statement, not a claim of theoretical superiority — and precisely for that reason it is hard to verify over the board. When a product promises that "if Black knows what to do, things quickly become dangerous for White", it is selling confidence more than variations. Silent applause can kill emotion, but it cannot kill tactics. In this case, what is threatened is transparency.

But wait — I must say what I always remind myself. I could be wrong. If I were a club player fed up with forced lines and memory swaps in the tournament hall, then "few concrete lines" is not a con — it is an escape. There is a real market segment for people who want to think for themselves, and that marketing hits their self-image. It is a disciplined sales strategy, not necessarily a plain lie. My error in judgment is reading it as technical evidence when it is only product positioning.

And to be fair: I have never held that disc in my hands. My judgment about the author and the quality of their variations is inference alone. A grandmaster with real King's Indian results could turn this secondary branch into an impressive practical tool, and I have no data to deny it. That is why I do not curse, I only ask.

And I keep one line like a charm: mistakes are not frightening; bending down at two in the morning to pick up the replay is what makes a forecaster. I have replayed enough to know that most opening arguments are not settled by shouting, only by databases and real games.

My call: 9...a5 will live on as a surprise weapon in open tournaments, where Black players seek an escape from heavy theory, and will be nearly absent at the top level in classical games. I also predict that within a few months, if this branch gains traction, White will release an "anti-antidote", and its marketing lifespan will close in exactly one theory cycle.

If you plan to pay, ask one question first: whom has its author beaten with this very variation?

One more thing to track. The mismatch between the Samarkand headline and the DVD body is a signal about source quality. If you revisit the original and find a real team event in Samarkand, remember that is a different story — and it deserves to be told from its own primary source.

Do not let anyone sell you a whole forest with a flyer about one tree.