King's Indian 9...a5: Trading Memory for Strategy, and the Unverified Promise of a DVD

The clock is running. 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 9.b4 — the Bayonet Attack. Black's hand hovers over the knight for a single second. Two doors stand open. Behind one lies 9...Nh5 — famous, sharp, almost forced, an endless race to keep pace with the engine's memory. Behind the other lies 9...a5 — quiet, strategic, the square where the board does the talking.

The pitch remembers what the camera missed.

Around that exact moment, a DVD has recently arrived on the market with a name that sounds like something else entirely: 'ChessMom returns: Supporting mothers on and off the board.' The title promises an emotional story about families and mothers, somewhere outside chess. What sits inside is something else: a Black repertoire against the Bayonet Attack in the King's Indian Defense, Mar del Plata Variation, built around a single move — 9...a5.

The first question lands before the technique does, and it is a question of honesty. When a title does not match its own contents, the reader should grow careful. I came into journalism from the print-only era, when every line answered to an editor's pen and a fax machine's arithmetic. Back then the headline served the content, not the other way around. This gap between name and interior is a signal — either series branding, or a mismatched identity. Either way, it raises a question of credibility, and that question sits at the centre of this column.

To understand it, we have to step back. The King's Indian Defense — 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 — is a defense where Black concedes the centre at once and strikes later with ...e5. It is the boldest expression of hypermodern thinking. The Mar del Plata Variation — 7...Nc6 — is its bloodiest branch: White lunges at the kingside, Black at the queenside, both wings catch fire at once, and the central pawn chain stays locked. In this structure, one wrong move can turn the whole game, which is exactly why preparation weighs so heavily here.

Across decades, engines and memorised theory have grown up together inside this variation. White's most modern weapon became 9.b4 — the Bayonet. It blocks Black's queenside plan (...a5, ...b5, ...Nc5) before it starts and hands White space toward the king. When the Bayonet arrived, many Black players' old plans died overnight. That is the gap the market hunts for — and this DVD has stepped into it.

I live in Saint Petersburg, in a country where chess is a profession — salaries, schools, coaches, and an entire craft of building theory. Here, repertoires are assembled through the night, in the rooms of seconds. So when a new DVD appears on the market, I do not read it only with a chess eye; I read it as a product of a knowledge economy — who makes it, who buys it, and why.

Now to the substance. The DVD places two doors before Black — and it is a door that means leaving the main line. The main line is 9...Nh5. That move opens the position, scatters the pieces, and begins forced, tactical play. This is where the engine and memory lock arms. If White knows the computer's line, Black must produce the correct answer on every single move — drift even slightly, and the gap widens. The real condition for winning here is computer-grade memory, and that is poison for the club player.

Then there is 9...a5. The move looks almost quiet. There is no coercion in it; instead, long-term positional plans — grabbing space on the queenside, clamping White's queenside with ...a4, the slow build of ...b5 and ...Nc5. The DVD claims that 'computers often do not know how to handle the arising complex strategic positions,' and that if Black understands the plans, things may quickly become dangerous for White.

That sentence is the heart of the product, and it is where my second question begins. The claim splits in two. The first part — 'objectively chances are equal.' The second — 'dangerous for White.' Both are worth saying. The problem is that the whole proposal contains no engine evaluation, no ACPL (average centipawn loss per move), no database win-draw-loss figures, no sample game at all.

A promise without accounting and a marketing line are the same currency. When a repertoire product says 'equal,' the reader needs to know — equal by whose accounting? Which engine, which version, at what depth? What is the comparative score of 9...Nh5 against 9...a5? Without those, the word 'equal' is a remark, not proof. And in chess that difference is not small, because players stake hours of preparation on that word.

The second claim is more troubled — 'computers don't know.' In the engine era, that sentence is close to obsolete. Modern engines handle the King's Indian's closed, slow, strategic positions very well; neural-network engines in particular show remarkable patience in locked centres. So this is not a technical truth; it is a marketing ornament. I am not calling it a crime. I am saying it needs to be flagged.

Still, I will concede one thing, because honesty is this column's capital. The DVD's pitch rests on a familiar and reasonable frame — practical versus objective. That is, 9...a5 may be marginally less perfect on paper than 9...Nh5, but in practice, at club level, time is short, memory is limited, and the opponent is human too. There, a line with less memorisation and more understanding often serves better. A board's result is not made only by the best move; it is made by the best move you can actually play.

That is where the real smell of commerce lies. The DVD is not really selling the move; it is selling the promise of release from memorisation. The heavier memory's burden became, the more expensive grew the slogan 'less memory, more understanding.' In modern chess, preparation is a livelihood; and exhausted preparation is a pain. The medicine for that pain is sold in a DVD box.

One thing needs to be made clear — 9...a5 is not a new discovery. It is a known, established sideline in the King's Indian's Bayonet branch, a familiar path fighting for queenside space and dodging the forcing knot of ...Nh5. The DVD is likely repackaging old theory, re-dressed, in a new voice and a new box. There is no sin in that — teaching works this way; every good course says old knowledge anew. But the reader should know they are not buying new theory; they are buying old theory newly told. That difference relates to price.

Who is the product for? In my reading — the club-to-International-Master player who has lost time in forced main-line preparation and grown tired. Not for elite grandmasters, because they already hold both lines. The DVD's true competitor is not White's Bayonet; it is other Black repertoire books, other courses, other subscription platforms. And in that contest, the winning weapon is not theory but clarity of teaching.

And here a signal of the times is hidden. The DVD — the medium itself — is slowly receding. Subscription courses, online platforms, streaming: wherever those are heading, the DVD is a legacy channel. So this product may not be new theory but a re-release from an old catalogue. That is not a fault, but it is context — and without context we buy the wrong thing at the wrong price.

I began chess commentary in 2026, at the World Cup in Tbilisi — a 128-player knockout over twenty-five days, no studio, no producer, just a laptop and a chat window scrolling faster than I could read. At that tournament, Levon Aronian beat Ding Liren in the rapid tiebreak to take the title, and in that very moment I was explaining to a schoolteacher in Khulna why a king can never be captured. That day I learned I was talking to a room I could not see.

In 2026 I got two grounds in one year. In June my own city hosted the football World Cup — eleven cities, fan zones, eighty-thousand-seat stadiums. In September I flew to Batumi for the 43rd Chess Olympiad, where China's men and women both took gold — the first federation to sweep both titles since the Soviet era — and where the hall held more than 180 federations and almost no cameras. Two pitches, one year, and the quiet math of belonging.

That experience taught me one thing: chess's real story usually happens off-camera — in the hours of preparation behind a single move, inside a DVD, in a club player's sleepless night. And the market's promises grow loudest exactly in that invisible place, because no one there can measure them.

Now to the side everyone avoids. We are all arguing whether 9...a5 is good on paper. But the real story is not there. The real story is that this market rewards the promise, not the proof. If a product says 'equal chances' and offers no data, it still sells — because the buyer is purchasing comfort, an easy path to a decision, the relief of 'I no longer have to memorise.' And where a market sells comfort, the value of verification falls.

That is the journalist's job here. I cannot declare 'this line is bad' or 'this line is good' — I hold no engine, no database scan, no sample game. But I can say: where there is no proof, let there be caution. The reader should verify before buying — with an engine, a current database, and their own head. None of those three tools has to be bought from anyone; today they sit in everyone's palm.

And one more side no one is stating. The title's 'ChessMom' and 'supporting mothers' — that emotional frame is mismatched to a purely chess product. It may be a series brand, a badly joined headline, or the identity of a different product. Whatever it is, it raises a question of credibility. If a product is not honest about its own name and its own interior, why should its claims be believed? If the name is staged, the claim inside may be staged too — the suspicion is not unreasonable.

Still, I do not want to drown in condemnation, because the DVD gets one thing right: the main line 9...Nh5 is the elite standard, and the sideline is a practical alternative — the DVD has the honesty to admit this. It is not claiming 9...a5 is an elite upgrade. It claims an advantage — of time, of memory, of understanding. That honesty is small, but it exists. And a product that admits its own limits at least deserves to be heard.

What is its industrial impact? Limited. This is a product, not an event, not a player. Its effect on youth training is neutral, on online platforms slightly positive — content demand rises — and on the publishing market small but real. It is part of the repertoire arms race: that eternal cycle where the more analysed the main line becomes, the more the 'anti-computer' sideline is resold. The cycle turns, and each time an old move returns in a new box.

At the end I return to that hovering hand. Black may play 9...a5, or may play 9...Nh5. In either case the real question is one — who will verify? I am certain the engine will answer, perhaps within the coming month. The moment the sideline is popularised, its surprise dies, and White builds a new antidote. Then the DVD may grow old again — because the board never forgives; it only keeps accounts.

And until then, reader, one question stays with me: a promise no one has verified — why would you buy it?