The King's Indian: The 9...a5 Move and the Limits of an Opening Promise

There is an odd file in my archive. The headline reads: “Samarkand R2 (open): Despite close calls, all top teams grab wins” — a team-event round report, the kind written in haste after round two of a tournament in Uzbekistan. But the body, from the first line to the last, discusses a chess DVD: the move 9...a5 against the Bayonet Attack in the King's Indian Defence. Two unrelated texts, spliced into a single package and pushed to market.

I sat with that mismatch for a long time. The board never lies; we are the ones who deceive ourselves with applause. Here, the applause is a handsome headline, and the truth sits in the body few people ever read. After thirty-two years of commentating on chess, I have learned one thing: when someone sells you a move instead of a game, read the fine print very carefully.

Who is speaking, and about what

The King's Indian Defence is one of the great surviving hypermodern classical systems: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Nf3 0-0 6.Be2 e5 7.0-0 Nc6 8.d5 Ne7. Black concedes the centre from the first move, then counterattacks the very centre he surrendered. The Mar del Plata variation pushes that logic to its limit: two sides launch opposite wing attacks, White on the queenside, Black on the kingside, and whoever breaks through first wins. The ECO code for this branch sits around E97–E99.

The Bayonet Attack, 9.b4, is White's fashionable answer: expand on the queenside, prepare c5, slow Black's counterplay. The main reply is 9...Nh5, which opens the position, forces ...f5 and ...Nf4, and leads into a forced sequence anyone who has sat in front of an engine knows: memorise to move twenty-five, or perish.

The product I am reading proposes another path: 9...a5. Black does not storm the kingside. Black asks a direct question of the b4-pawn.

This is a Fritztrainer-style item — an opening lecture disc built on the “antidote to a trendy line” template, a very stable and very unglamorous corner of the chess market. The target buyer is described plainly: players who prefer to think for themselves rather than memorise. Selling by identity works extremely well with club players.

What 9...a5 actually does

After 9.b4 a5, Black gives White no time to consolidate the queenside. The b4-pawn is challenged at once, and White must choose: trade, push to b5, or hold and accept a cramped structure. All three options pull the game off the memorised highway that runs to move twenty-five.

The key lies in the change of character. After 9...Nh5, the position opens; after 9...a5, it closes. White loses his strongest tool, a favourable forced sequence, and is dragged into a positional game where skill matters more than recall.

The real value of this pitch lies in shifting the game from memory to judgment — not in the move being theoretically stronger.

The product does not hide this. It concedes equality, and its framing rests on a human-versus-engine contrast: 9...Nh5 opens the position, forces the lines, and makes computer analysis important again; 9...a5 leads to sound positions with very few concrete lines.

Based on my experience following games and opening-preparation sessions, the description feels right but is entirely unsupported by evidence. No engine evaluation. No sample games. No win rate, no draw rate, no average centipawn loss. No author name, and no results by that author in the Mar del Plata itself. An opening product that cannot cite a single game is asking buyers to trust a reputation — and that reputation is never stated.

One theoretical fact must be stated clearly: 9...a5 is not a novelty. It is a long-recognised secondary branch, ranked behind 9...Nh5 in the theoretical hierarchy. Buyers are not purchasing an invention; they are purchasing a map redrawn to be easier to walk.

The market this product competes in

The competition here is not a rating table but a theory ecosystem. At one end sit low-risk systems such as the Grünfeld, the Nimzo or the Italian, chosen by elite players because preparation costs are low. At the other end sits the King's Indian, where every move can be punished by a patient opponent.

With the King's Indian's share of elite classical games falling noticeably since engines took over, the system survives as a surprise weapon rather than a daily choice. A DVD does not change that structure.

And here I must be blunt: the argument that “computers often do not know how to handle these complex strategic positions” is marketing language from the pre-AlphaZero era. Neural-network engines handle long-term King's Indian positions far better than that sentence implies. The claim was once true; now it is only a sales device.

The contrarian angle

Stand on White's side. If you are a prepared player, you know 9...a5 exists. You know where it leads. You can pick a good structure, keep a small space advantage and play on. An antidote is only worth something until the other side reads it — and the Bayonet branch is analysed so densely that the lifespan of any antidote is short.

The biggest risk is not technical error. The biggest risk is theoretical obsolescence.

Nor do I overlook the most troubling detail in the package: the headline describes a team-event round in Samarkand, while the body describes an opening DVD. No team, no board, no result appears in the body. To me, that is a sign of an information-integrity failure. From keyboard to board, the speed of words is never the speed of pieces — and when people run faster than the pieces, they splice the wrong headline.

What to keep

In 2026 I thought I was stepping onto a stage. It turned out I had only entered the corridor. The lesson repeats here: a move is not a career, and a secondary branch is not a solution.

For club players, 9...a5 has genuine value. It reduces memorisation, pushes the game toward positional judgment, and gives Black a plan rather than a memory contest. For elite players, it is a surprise option: used once, then retired.

The question I leave behind is not whether 9...a5 is strong. The question is how long until White publishes the answer — and what the buyers of an antidote will study next.