The 9...a5 Move and the Gamble of Players Who Want to Escape the Computer's Memory

I still remember that night when a sixteen-year-old former student messaged me a single line: "Teacher, I'm being forced to move twenty already." He had played the King's Indian Defense for three years, loved it like an old house, yet this season he felt like a stranger in his own home. People had memorized every move, and he had not. That was the moment I understood the story I am about to tell is no longer about opening theory — it is about people, about players who want to keep some soul in their game.

The product I am referring to is an instructional chess opening DVD built around the King's Indian Defense, Classical Variation, Mar del Plata system. For those unfamiliar, this is one of the classic hypermodern defenses: Black deliberately concedes the center to White and then counterattacks with ...g6, ...Bg7, ...d6 and ...e5. The move ...Nc6 on move seven opens the Mar del Plata system, launching a two-wing race — White attacks the queenside, Black attacks the kingside. That is why this position is both beautiful and cruel: each side charges forward, and whoever arrives first wins.

The flashpoint of the whole story is move nine. White plays 9.b4 — the Bayonet Attack, a queenside pawn thrust that breaks Black's setup and is considered fashionable and deeply annoying. Black has several replies, but the mainstream choice is 9...Nh5, which opens the position and pushes both sides into forced lines you must remember like a memorized lesson. And here the DVD makes its proposal: instead of 9...Nh5, play 9...a5.

The move 9...a5 is not an invention out of thin air. It attacks White's b4-pawn, gains space, and prepares ...c5 and ...Be6 — a move that has genuinely appeared in top-level practice, only never packaged as a complete system. What this product sells is not a theoretical edge but an escape route: positions with few forced lines, where strategy dominates tactics, where the player only needs to understand plans rather than memorize moves. It targets club and strong-club players, who face the Bayonet less often than professionals and need understanding more than memory.

This is where I want to pause longest, because it touches what I believe. The true value of an opening line lies not in being theoretically stronger, but in being able to live inside a human mind under clock pressure. 9...a5 does not promise to beat 9...Nh5. It promises something more modest but more precious to the majority: returning the game to a dialogue between two minds instead of a contest between two memories.

Yet I must say plainly what a writer's conscience obliges me to say. The entire weight of this product rests on a claim with no data behind it. There is no engine match rate, no ACPL — average centipawn loss per move, no game database cited. It asserts that 9...a5 has "very few concrete lines" and is "sound," but assertion is not evidence. Based on my experience commentating and following tournaments, an opening line without real-game numbers is merely a pretty hypothesis — and pretty hypotheses are countless. What deserves note is that the original material never names the DVD's author — a significant gap, since the authority of a grandmaster specializing in the King's Indian would carry a completely different weight from an anonymous product.

What deserves more discussion is the core selling point itself: that computers often cannot handle such complex strategic positions. That belief is outdated. Modern engines like Stockfish and Leela evaluate strategic King's Indian positions reliably, and the gap narrows with every update. A product positioning itself against computers will find it ever harder to sell, because its enemy grows stronger every day while its argument stands still.

I see a familiar paradox here, and it reminds me of my own story. I thought I was exiled from writing when my piece was cut for "writing literature in sports reporting," but that very fracture pushed me deeper into my craft. The makers of this DVD are much the same: they are trying to find their own path in an era when every move has been scrutinized by machines. But they differ from me in one respect — they choose to confront the computer, while I chose to learn to live alongside it.

One more thing few notice: the format itself tells the story of its own future. A static DVD cannot be updated after release, whereas opening knowledge today flows through subscription platforms like Chessable, online lessons and interactive databases — places that can be corrected with every engine patch. The battle of 9...a5, if there is one, will be decided on those platforms, not inside a plastic box.

So what remains worth remembering? Perhaps the image of my sixteen-year-old student. If he chooses 9...a5, he is not choosing a stronger move — he is choosing the right to think slowly. And in a chess world running faster than its people, that right is the most valuable thing anyone can reclaim for themselves.