9...a5 Against the Bayonet: One DVD's Gamble and Its Three Unkept Promises

Moscow, Tuesday night. In the dim corner of the club where the clock is louder than the lights, a sixty-eight-year-old played 9...a5 against the King's Indian's sharpest branch — in four seconds, the way a man pulls out a key he has been told fits. The twenty-year-old opposite him smiled, because he already knew where the next forty minutes would go. Afterwards the older man told me a DVD had promised him this was the line where you do not memorise, you think. I asked what the plan was after the move. He said: 'It was in the DVD.'

There was no plan on the board. There was a half-finished sentence, and a clock that would not let him finish it.

The product is called 'Svitlana's Smart Moves – King's Indian Attack at the Olympiad.' Everything technical in its description points in one direction: the King's Indian Defence, Mar del Plata variation, 7...Nc6, and White's Bayonet Attack 9.b4. The first crack is right in the title. 'King's Indian Attack' is a different animal altogether — 1.Nf3, 2.g3, 3.Bg2, then d3, a slow squeeze. That is not what the DVD teaches. The DVD teaches the King's Indian Defence: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6, the ...e5 strike, the kingside pawn storm.

The Mar del Plata takes its name from the 2026 tournament in Argentina and sits in the E97–E99 band of the ECO classification. It is mutual attack on opposite wings — two wrestlers holding each other's throats, one pushing queenside, one pushing kingside. In the 1990s White found the modern answer: 9.b4, the Bayonet, which grabs queenside space and makes Black's ...f5 break awkward. Black's traditional reply has been 9...Nh5, heading for ...f5 and ...Nf4, a line that demands calculation at every turn. The DVD recommends 9...a5 instead — a rarer, more strategic way of restraining White's queenside expansion.

One fact governs everything that follows: the product description names no author, no title, no rating, no model games, no video length, no database size, and not a single engine evaluation. What exists is marketing copy. Marketing copy is precisely what has to be tested on a board.

The copy's argument is genuinely coherent, and it deserves credit for that. Mar del Plata produces rich long-term strategic positions. Engines allegedly mishandle them. Therefore the human player — the one who thinks rather than memorises — gains. But the Bayonet disrupts that. And the main line 9...Nh5 collapses back into forced, computer-friendly territory. Therefore take 9...a5 and stay in the human domain.

That argument identifies a real tension in King's Indian practice: forcing lines versus opaque manoeuvring. Its weakest link, however, is the engine claim, and that claim has aged badly. 'Computers cannot handle these positions' belonged to roughly 2026–2026, when engines struggled in closed structures. Since NNUE evaluation became standard from 2026, engines handle closed, strategic positions far better. The buyer of this DVD runs that engine every night at depth thirty-two.

The description then contradicts itself inside a single paragraph. It says computers cannot handle these positions, and then says that after 9...Nh5 'computer analysis becomes important again.' The second sentence concedes the first: engine mastery is the norm, and 9...a5 is the tunnel out of it. The tunnel only matters if the surface is genuinely frightening — and the surface has grown denser, not more frightening.

Then comes the void. Serious opening material carries three things as a matter of course: engine evaluation, database frequency of the move, and named model games. Here there is none of the three. No average centipawn loss, no move-match rate, no results percentage, no Olympiad year, no round, no player. The claims are not therefore false. They are hypotheses being sold as facts.

The cleverest sentence in the description is 'objectively equal, but dangerous for White.' This is the oldest formula in opening literature. 'Equal' reassures the buyer that the line is not refuted; 'dangerous for White' offers upside. Both can be true at once. The description supplies evidence for neither — reassurance and upside, with no bridge between them.

The scope is narrow by construction. The product answers exactly one White branch, 9.b4. In the Mar del Plata, White keeps fully independent, still-popular alternatives at move nine — 9.Ne1 and 9.Nd2 — plus earlier deviations such as 8.Be3 and 8.Re1. The DVD solves one node of a very large tree. That is not a flaw in the chess; it is a flaw in the impression the marketing creates. An antidote to the Bayonet is not a Mar del Plata repertoire.

Using the Olympiad as a source is sound in principle. Roughly 180 to 190 national teams, most of the world's top hundred, high stakes, and every game score public. The microphone did not leave the box; it learned to breathe with the crowd. Calling from the booth at the 2026 Budapest Olympiad, what struck me was how the temperature of a game changes in a team match: nine other boards exist, and a draw can be enough for the team.

That is also the hidden weakness of the sourcing. Team-event games are result-oriented; players sometimes avoid risk because the team does not need it. Building a repertoire on them is fine if you cross-check against individual elite events. No such cross-check appears here. And the description never names which Olympiad, which year, which round. A product that will not cite its own source games is asking for trust it has not earned.

The title error is not cosmetic. In a search-driven market it is a double wound: King's Indian Attack players will buy it and feel cheated, while King's Indian Defence players — the actual customers — may never find it. A book that misnames its own subject invites doubt on move one.

Format compounds the problem. A DVD is static media in a market moving toward subscription, continuously updated, database-linked repertoires. A single-variation product has a short relevance half-life, because the engine moves and White's preparation moves with it. In 2026, cramming chess news into one column at The Hindu taught me that a constraint honestly described is a form of craft. Today the constraint is gone; anyone can open the database. What remains as a product's capital is explanation — and explanation only sells when facts stand behind it.

Here is where the most interesting thing about this release sits, and it is not the chess. The weakest link is not 9...a5. It is the promise of ease. Forced lines can be memorised. Positions where nothing is forced demand a decision on every move, with a clock running. Less calculation does not mean less work; it means more judgement, and judgement is exactly what extracts the highest price from weaker players. The description itself admits these positions require long-term planning and tactical sharpness. That sentence is true, and it eats the promise of ease alive.

Second reversal: publicising an antidote destroys the antidote. The practical value of 9...a5 is surprise. Once the DVD is out, White prepares against it specifically, and Black is left with the one thing the product did not supply — depth of understanding. The product weakens the very asset it advertises.

Third: confidence in a market where any opening claim can age in eighteen months. A product with no errata channel is telling its buyer that chess has stopped moving. It has not.

None of which means the DVD is worthless. Its real asset sits where the market is driest: the player who wants to understand rather than memorise is a genuine, large, underserved segment. Most repertoire products respond by offering more memorisation. A product that says there is room to think is touching something real. The failure is that it sold that room as easiness when it should have sold it as depth.

What to watch from here is concrete. First, current NNUE evaluation of the critical 9...a5 positions — a meaningful drift would undermine the core claim. Second, adoption in any 2650-plus classical game; one good result changes a line's reputation. Third, the database frequency of 9.b4 versus 9.Ne1 and 9.Nd2 — a shift back to the classical branches shrinks the addressable market. Fourth, and most important, publisher disclosure: author name, title, video length, model-game list. On the day those appear, the DVD can be judged on chess rather than on copy.

The old man asked me again this week what to do after 9...a5. I told him to decide first what kind of player he is. If he is the player who can build a thirty-minute plan and hold it while the position shifts, the line is for him. If he is the player who wants an answer quickly, he will have to calculate 9...Nh5 — at least there the question has a reply.

The recording can be good. The hall will still decide. And in the hall sits a man who plays in four seconds and spends the next forty minutes not knowing what he was supposed to think about. He has the DVD. He does not have the plan. The day chess publishing understands that difference, we will sell better products — and make fewer promises.