Selling the Antidote to the Bayonet: Who Actually Pays for 9...a5?

In 2026 the Delhi International Open put more than 400 boards on the floor, and I spent three days sitting between boards 1 and 10. The scene I still carry in the recorder, though, was not from the top boards. It was board 43: a boy of fourteen or fifteen playing the King's Indian Defence, White played 9.b4, and the game was over in twenty-eight moves. The arbiter wrote the result down and said the word out loud — "Bayonet." The kid asked, "What is the cure for this?" I had no answer then, only a recording. Recently an answer arrived as a DVD — the "Svitlana's Smart Moves" series, presenting 9...a5 in the King's Indian Mar del Plata as the new antidote to the Bayonet. My first reflex was the one the tournament hall teaches you: switch the recorder on, count the claims, and work out who is paying.

Here is the plain version: this product is not selling a line, it is selling a customer segment. And that segment is real — players who would rather reason than memorise genuinely exist, and the market serves them badly. But the thing being charged for has zero evidence behind it. That gap is the story.

The Mar del Plata is the sharpest branch of the King's Indian. Black concedes the centre, then strikes with ...e5 and a ...f5 pawn storm on the kingside while White attacks on the queenside. 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 is the structure. White's modern main weapon is 9.b4, the Bayonet: push the queenside pawns to blunt the speed of Black's kingside attack. Black's long-standing answer is 9...Nh5, after which the game drops into the familiar forcing sequences with ...f5 and ...Nf4. The 9...a5 this DVD recommends is not a discovery — it is the road less travelled, repackaged here as the cure for the Bayonet.

The sales argument runs in five steps and looks immaculate. One, the Mar del Plata produces rich, long-term strategic positions. Two, computers do not understand those positions. Three, therefore a human-minded player benefits. Four, but the fashionable Bayonet disrupts all of that. Five, because 9...Nh5 collapses back into forced, engine-friendly lines, play 9...a5 and stay inside the human domain.

The logic is internally coherent. The Mar del Plata really does contain that tension between forcing engine lines and opaque manoeuvring. My objection is not to the argument, it is to the evidence.

There is not a single number in the entire presentation. No engine evaluation, no ACPL, no engine match rate, no database frequency for the line, no game count, no named model game. For a product whose whole pitch is "understand the strategy, stop memorising," the annotated model games are the primary evidence — and not one game is cited. Years of sitting in open tournaments have taught me the same thing: when someone claims a result without showing the score sheet, start counting, not clapping.

"Computers cannot handle these positions" is a pre-2026 sentence. Since NNUE evaluation became standard, engine handling of closed, locked, slow-manoeuvring positions has improved dramatically. The trope about engines getting lost in closed structures belongs to roughly 2026-2026, and selling it in 2026 is an old habit in a new box. Sharper still, the promotional copy contradicts itself inside a single breath. One part says computers cannot manage these positions; another concedes that after 9...Nh5, "computer analysis becomes important again." That concedes the real point — engine mastery is the baseline, and 9...a5 is the escape route from it. That is sales language, not analysis.

The scope is one node, not the tree. The product handles exactly one White branch, 9.b4. In the Mar del Plata, White still has fully independent and still-popular options at move nine — 9.Ne1 and 9.Nd2 — plus earlier deviations at move eight such as 8.Be3 and 8.Re1. A Black player who adopts the Mar del Plata needs answers to all of them. "The antidote to the Bayonet" and "a Mar del Plata repertoire" have been quietly merged here, and that merger is the most common misunderstanding a buyer pays for.

"Objectively equal, but dangerous for White" is an old marketing device. It promises two things at once: theoretical reassurance (the line has not been refuted) and practical upside (there are points to be scored). Both can be true simultaneously. But the article offers no evidence for either — no engine assessment, no results split, no named game. In the 400-board classroom I learned that scale hides the story; here there is no scale, only the story.

One word in the title is wrong, and it will cost. The King's Indian Attack and the King's Indian Defence are different openings. The Attack is the 1.Nf3, 2.g3, 3.Bg2, d3 system; the moves described here belong to the King's Indian Defence, Mar del Plata. Loose series branding probably explains it, but the outcome is a discoverability problem: in a search-driven market the product will pull the wrong buyer (Attack players) and confuse the right one (Defence players). In opening content, the title is the first filter.

And the question I always ask: who is paying? The model games come from the Olympiad — public score sheets, zero content-acquisition cost, and a free prestige label. The Olympiad is a deep event, roughly 180-190 teams and a large share of the world's top 100. As sourcing, that is sensible. But team-match incentives bring a bias with them: where a draw is enough for the team, play gets less critical and more result-oriented. Building preparation purely on team-event games and treating it as Candidates-grade evidence are two different things. This article names no game, no round, no year, no player — the Olympiad is decoration here, not analysis.

So who is the actual buyer? A few thousand committed King's Indian players worldwide who face 9.b4 regularly. That is a healthy pocket, not a market. And because 9...a5 is already public, the publisher's real value-add is explanation, not discovery. Selling explanation is fine; presenting it as proof is not.

The most under-priced risk is not emotional, it is cognitive. The pitch says: few concrete lines, more strategy, less memorisation. The same material also says these positions demand long-term planning and tactical sharpness. Both can be true, yet the buyer's experience runs the other way: in positions where nothing is forced, the weaker player does not struggle less, he struggles more — because the entire burden of choosing a plan lands on him. A line sold as "easier" is often the most expensive one on the clock. Delhi taught me that volume is not depth and noise is not proof.

On rules and governance there is nothing here. It is a training product, outside FIDE's competitive rule set. Even the anti-cheating angle runs in reverse: the product markets resistance to engine preparation, which is benign and arguably good for the sport. The exposure is limited to unsubstantiated claims and the decay rate of static media. Against subscription repertoires that update continuously, a fixed DVD has a shelf life shorter than its price.

Now the part where I try to prove myself wrong, because contrarianism as a brand kills the argument. The strongest mainstream case is this: opening products sell on language, and language does not need ACPL tables. A player who takes a low-frequency line like 9...a5 into a tournament hall gains the value of the opponent's unfamiliarity — that is a serious practical argument and no engine number refutes it. Second, data missing from the promotional copy does not prove data is missing from the product; the videos may carry an engine line for every position. Third, and most important, not being a complete repertoire is not a defect — it is a different product category. Selling a supplement is not a con, as long as it is not sold as a substitute.

My objection still stands, because the real question is not the line but the status of the claim. If you say "objectively equal," that is the engine's job, not rhetoric's. If you say "dangerous for White," that is the results data's job, not a feeling's.

My bet is public and dated. If within the next eighteen months a 2650-plus classical game features 9...a5 in the Mar del Plata and Black comes away with a solid result, I will publish a correction. If it does not, this DVD will sit in its own niche with a shelf life under two years. The transfer-window rule applies here too: value is set by the release clause and the wage bill, not the highlight reel. The release clause here is scope — only 9.b4. The wage bill is the money the buyer pays without knowing whether he bought one door of the cupboard or the whole house.