King's Indian Mar del Plata: A DVD Sells 9...a5 as the Answer to the Bayonet Attack

Three in the morning, and I set up a King's Indian game on the small board in my Hanoi apartment. The computer stayed muted — no commentary, no soundtrack. After White's 9.b4, the white pawn stepped one square forward, poking into Black's queenside like a small blade. White had just carved out space directly in front of the black king, and in top-level games over the past few years that move has appeared so often that the opening community gave it a name: the Bayonet Attack.

Then I read a promotional blurb. It was selling 9...a5 as an antidote. The author promised a position with few concrete lines, little memorisation, meant for players who like to think for themselves. I closed it, opened the board, and started counting.

Context

The King's Indian Defense is one of the strangest defensive systems in chess. Black concedes the centre, retreats to build a structure, then counterattacks with ...e5 and ...c5. In the Mar del Plata variation, Black pushes ...Nc6 and ...e5, and both sides race to attack opposite wings: White on the queenside, Black on the kingside. By ECO classification, this branch sits between E97 and E99.

Over the past few years, the Bayonet Attack 9.b4 has become White's favourite weapon. The move grabs queenside space, blocks Black's ...b5 plan, and forces an immediate reply. The orthodox answer is 9...Nh5 — Black lifts a knight to the rim, opens the position, and accepts sharp lines that demand precise calculation. At elite level, this is a branch that forces both sides to prepare with an engine.

The product I read proposes something else: 9...a5. Black does not strike at the centre and does not open the position. Black pokes at the very b4-pawn White just advanced, dragging the game toward a slow, strategic struggle with few forced lines. That is the entire sales pitch. The blurb belongs to the Fritztrainer format — the instructional DVD catalogue familiar to the European chess market, where the steadiest revenue comes from selling answers to whatever line is currently fashionable. A quiet market, short on glamour.

Analysis

Place the two moves side by side on the board and two philosophies emerge. 9...Nh5 is a punch. Black opens files, throws pieces into the game, and turns the position into a test of memory and accuracy. 9...a5 is a shoulder nudge. Black does not try to win in ten moves; Black puts a question mark over White's pawn structure and waits.

Geometrically, ...a5 draws an extra diagonal across the queenside. The black pawn advances and applies direct pressure to b4. If White trades, the structure changes entirely and the a-file opens — but for whom depends on who controls it first. If White pushes b5, Black gets a fixed target to play against. That small move redraws the whole map of squares on the queenside.

The plans afterwards are fairly clear. Black usually reroutes the knight to ...Nbd7, brings ...Ne8 and then ...f5, rebuilding the kingside wall at a slow tempo. White pushes b5 or opens the c-file and strikes at the centre. The tempo is far slower than after 9...Nh5. Club players will find it breathable. Stronger players will find they have to think for themselves far more — which is exactly what the product is selling.

The crux of the marketing argument is a human-versus-machine contrast. The author claims 9...Nh5 opens the position, forces the lines, and makes engine analysis important again, while 9...a5 leads to sound positions with very few concrete lines. From there the conclusion is that chances are equal. That is a positional judgement, not a theoretical discovery.

This is where I need my silence. Sometimes, to understand a game, you have to stand in silence longer than others can bear. And in the silence, three gaps appeared.

First, not a single game is cited. No win rate, no average centipawn loss, no database. The promise of few concrete lines is a sentence, not a verifiable fact.

Second, the claim that computers often do not know how to handle these complex strategic positions belongs to the pre-AlphaZero era. Today's neural-network engines handle the long-term strategic positions of the King's Indian far better than that sentence suggests. It was once true; now it reads like a relic kept around because it still sells.

Third, the author has no name. No title, no results in the Mar del Plata, no sample games. An opening product is sold on the credibility of the person who made it, and that credibility is left blank.

As for real value, 9...a5 is a genuine, well-known branch, not an invention. It shifts the game from a position where Black is forced to memorise toward one where Black asks the questions. The value is practical and psychological, not theoretical superiority. For a club player trying to escape long nights of cramming variations, it is a reasonable purchase. Against an opponent with a database, it is simply another branch to calculate.

My own tracking of King's Indian games at recent open events suggests 9...Nh5 still dominates, with 9...a5 appearing only sporadically. I do not have enough data to claim a trend, so I only record what I see: a sideline remains a sideline.

Contrarian Angle

The blind spot lies elsewhere. Buyers think they are purchasing relief. But the Mar del Plata is still sharp. A well-prepared White player still has play after 9...a5; the branch has been in the books for years, and anyone who has studied the Bayonet has met it at least once. The promise of less memorisation may hold for club players, but not against an opponent with an engine and time.

More telling still: the computers-can't-handle-it line is itself a sales device. It manufactures a rival to compare against — the free engine — and turns the difference into a commercial advantage. The packaging aimed at players who think for themselves rather than memorisers targets the buyer's self-image more than the position on the board.

I also note a source-quality problem. When this document reached me, the headline described a team-event round report in Samarkand, while the body was a DVD blurb. Two unrelated texts had been spliced into one package. For a serious reader, that is a signal to verify the origin before quoting anything from it.

Takeaway

People say girls know nothing about tactics. So I write for them to read. Tactics never lie; only the reader gets it wrong.

What to watch in the coming events is concrete: will 9...a5 appear in classical games among the 2700+ group? If it does, a White-side counter-antidote will follow within months. If it does not, it stays exactly where it belongs — a decent sideline, useful for amateur players, and nothing more.

A single pass can be the answer to every doubt. So can a single good move.