Chess: The 9...a5 Move and the 'No Memorization Needed' Promise in the King's Indian Defense

Back when I still sat in the old newsroom, an older colleague taught me a line I keep like a talisman to this day: "Every time someone sells you a move, ask yourself which move they are hiding." He was not talking about chess. He was talking about the craft. But for me, the two have long since become one.

Over the years I have heard every kind of pitch in the opening-theory marketplace, from courses advertised as magic keys to books promising to turn a beginner into a master in a single winter. That line still holds its value every time I open a new training product.

This week, on my desk in Da Nang, there is an opening DVD. It promises precisely what every player wants to hear: an antidote to the Bayonet Attack, no memorization required, no need to run an engine until midnight. But one detail stopped me at the very first line. The headline of the original item speaks of a team-event round in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. The body instead discusses a move in the King's Indian Defense. Two different stories sharing one sheet of paper, like two strangers seated at the wrong wedding table. That is why I sat down to write this piece.

Context: an opening for those who believe in audacity

The King's Indian Defense — shortened to KID in the trade — is a system in which Black concedes the center from the opening moves and then recaptures it with ...e5 and ...c5. This is the classic hypermodern idea: do not occupy space, instead invite your opponent to occupy it and turn that space into a burden.

The Mar del Plata variation, with ...Nc6 and ...e5, is the sharpest branch of the system, sitting roughly in the ECO range E97 to E99. Both sides then sprint on opposite wings: White pushes pawns on the queenside, Black pushes pawns on the kingside, and whoever reaches the enemy king first wins. It is the opening young players are taught to memorize, because a single move off script can lose in seventeen moves.

White has a fashionable weapon called the Bayonet Attack, the move 9.b4. White grabs queenside space, opens a path for the b4-pawn to advance, and makes Black's defensive line hard to breathe through. The orthodox reply that the profession treats as the default is 9...Nh5. Black opens the position, forces the play down concrete roads, and drives the game toward sequences of obligatory moves. That is why 9...Nh5 became the "default move" of the variation — not because it is beautiful, but because it is decisive.

The DVD I am describing proposes another path: 9...a5. This is a known branch, but a secondary one. Instead of opening the position, Black jabs at the b4-pawn on the spot, dragging the game into a slower, more strategic mode with fewer forced lines, where both sides have to think for themselves.

Analysis: where the promise actually sits

The DVD seller bets on a very subtle psychological idea. After 9...Nh5 the position opens, the variations become concrete, and computer analysis matters again. After 9...a5 the position closes, the variations shrink, and the weight falls on the strategic judgment of the player. The pitch is written for one specific audience: players who like to think for themselves, who do not want to become a memorization machine.

I sat with several lines of 9...a5 in my own database for a good while. The typical structure has White push b4 and Black reply ...a5, striking directly at the foot of White's advancing pawn. White must choose: push b5 and accept a closed structure, accept that b4 is frozen, or open the center with a series of exchanges to regain space. All three roads lead to positions where the player needs to read the board rather than recall moves.

There is an interesting paradox here. The KID Mar del Plata is famous as one of the most calculation-heavy openings in all of chess. Anyone who has played Black in this variation knows the feeling of having to remember dozens of lines and still getting mated in seventeen moves. Selling 9...a5 as a "low-line move" is a way of repositioning a product, not a technical statement. It may be true on the practical level — fewer forced lines, more autonomy — but it does not make calculation disappear. No branch of the KID Mar del Plata does that.

Worth noting is the claim the seller makes that "computers often do not know how to handle these complex strategic positions." This is the language of the pre-AlphaZero era, when traditional engines were strong tactically but still clumsy in long-term positions. The current generation of neural-network engines has changed the picture entirely. They handle the closed positions of the KID far better than this claim suggests. A marketing argument built on an outdated premise can still sell, but it no longer reflects the reality on the board.

The DVD, to its credit, has one genuine strength: it does not pretend to offer a novelty. It does not promise a move never seen before. It presents a known move repackaged as a practical choice. Read correctly, this is a useful product for club players who want a weapon other than 9...Nh5 in their arsenal.

But here is where I must speak plainly to my readers in Vietnam. A well-prepared White player still has play after 9...a5, and no database in the seller's hands shows otherwise. I checked several open databases I have access to. There is no win-rate table, no average move-quality figure, no sample game bundled with the product. An opening product without data is just a promise with a persuasive tone of voice.

Counter-intuitive angle: the headline and the body do not belong together

There are three things I want to say plainly, the way my old colleague would say them if he were still in the newsroom.

First, an opening-theory advertisement that names no author, cites none of that author's results in the very system, and provides not a single sample game with engine evaluation cannot serve as serious reference material. The first thing a level-headed buyer needs to ask is simple: who is selling, and where has that person played 9...a5. Without an answer, everything else is just belief.

Second, the claim that "if Black knows what to do, things quickly become dangerous for White" is an absolute statement in advertising register. It is true of almost every good move in every opening, which means it says nothing special about 9...a5. When a pitch uses absolute language, the reader should lower expectations, not raise them.

Third, and this is what bothers me most: the mismatch between the headline and the body of the original item. The headline speaks of round two of a team event in Samarkand, while the body discusses an instructional opening DVD. No tournament, no team, no result appears in the content. For someone in my trade, that is an information-integrity failure. Anyone re-citing this text should verify its origin before trusting it.

What remains after all of it

I thought I was reading a tournament report, and it turned out I was reading an advertisement that lost its way. I thought I was buying a move, and it turned out I was buying a belief. I thought I had been exiled from the board, and it turned out the board was leading me deeper into myself. And in that lost path I found a familiar lesson: the opening-theory marketplace always sells us a feeling of control. But the board never agrees to sit still inside a promise.

Next week I will still test a few lines of 9...a5 in practice games in Da Nang, not because I believe the DVD, but because I want to see for myself where the move leads. A move only becomes yours when you have touched it with your own hands. As for the promises, let them stay on the shelf with the discs.