Samarkand on a Disc Label: Where the 9...a5 'Antidote' Stops

A theory DVD sat on a cafe table in Delhi, its printed cover advertising "Samarkand R7 (open): Uzbekistan continue dominating run, extend lead." The disc inside carried a King's Indian Defence repertoire built around the Bayonet Attack and Black's 9...a5. No round-seven results, no standings, no player names. That single sleeve is the whole story: a headline borrowed from a trending event, wrapped around commercial opening-theory copy. The chess inside the product is real enough. In the King's Indian, Black fianchettoes the king's bishop and strikes with ...e5; when White answers 9.b4 — the Bayonet Attack — the Mar del Plata complex (7...Nc6) turns the game into a race of opposite-wing attacks. Black's two main replies are 9...Nh5, sharp and force-heavy, and 9...a5, the established sideline the DVD sells as an "antidote." Its pitch is sound at the human level: fewer forced, memorised lines, more strategic play. Its framing is not. The claim that computers cannot handle these closed, strategic positions belongs to the pre-2026 era; since the NNUE revolution, neural-network engines evaluate such positions reliably. The further claim that "objectively, chances are equal" arrives with no engine evaluation and no database sample of 9...a5 games. Watching Bangladesh's four boards and a reserve across eleven rounds of the 44th Chess Olympiad in Chennai in 2026 taught me the useful rule: an opening line is priced by results, not by advertising. In small sports economies, importing theory products is easy and building a cohort is hard — Leonine Chess Club in Dhaka can do only so much without curricula, scholarships and home GM-norm events. The Samarkand headline, if it describes a real round, belongs in a different folder. The disc belongs on the board, next to a live database and a current engine.