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The KID: Breaking it Down to the Basics
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The KID: Breaking it Down to the Basics

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Before jumping into the lines, theory, and variations of the King's Indian Defense, we need to understand the main ideas. We will start from the bottom and work our way up, so this first post will outline the most basic aspects of the KID and the simple ideas at work. 

Remember the position that defines the KID is with a knight on f6 and a fianchettoed kingside bishop. To illustrate it more clearly I intentionally removed all of white's pieces and pawns and only showed black's pawns and kingside knight and bishop.

There are a lot of openings with this fianchettoed kingside bishop setup, including the Pirc, Modern, Sicilian Dragon (I made a post on how to defeat the Dragon, go check it out!), Pterodactyl, etc., but it is a KID only after 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. (options, Nc3, Nf3, g3, etc.) Bg7, distinguishing it from the Grunfeld Defense (1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 2. (options) d5).

If white does not play 2. c4, it is called an Indian Game unless it transposes to KID or another opening's lines (an exception is 2. Bg5, the Trompowsky).

The KID is a hypermodern defense, meaning that black lets white immediately take full control of the center, only to challenge it later on in the game. In many hypermodern defenses, including this one, the main breaks are ...e7-e5 and ...c7(or c6 depending)-c5. 

The most important lines of the KID sprout from white playing to grab the center immediately, and that is when the most tooth-and-nail play comes from, with black either breaking with ...b7-b5 and playing on the queenside or ...f7-f5 and playing on the queenside, and white playing on the opposite side.

But we will not get too in-depth on that yet. Let us first examine why black chooses this setup. First of all, it is a hypermodern defense, of which almost all include a fianchettoed bishop (or two) at one point or another. The point of the bishop is to strike at the center from a distance, which is what the g7 bishop is doing, looking down the a1-h8 diagonal on which d4 there will usually be a pawn. If that pawn moves, the bishop will have even more scope and possibly be looking at a b2 pawn and an a1 rook behind it. In many lines of the KID this dark-squared bishop is one of the most important pieces on the board.

This is all assuming that white has played Nc3 on the third move and e4 on the fourth already, which is the first group of variations that we will learn about first. There will be other posts like this one for other third and fourth moves.

A commonly reached position:

Once the f6 knight moves, the bishop will be uncovered and will fire on the d4 pawn in coordination with its fellow pawns, which will move to e5, c5, or both, and knight on c6. The d4 pawn will feel the pressure and most likely push forward to d5 or capture on e5 and lead the game into an endgame after an exchange of queens on the d-file.
Black absolutely must play for e5 or c5, or he will slowly be ground down until there is no more room to breathe. These two pawn breaks are why this opening exists. Hypermodern openings do not work if you do not strike back at the center before it is too late.
The first line that we will look at in the next post is known as the Main Line, the Mar del Plata Attack, or, more officially, the Orthodox, Aronin-Taimanov Defense, which leads to the Classical. This is how it is usually reached, but there are a few other move orders:
There are a few different moves that white can play here, and some different responses that black can play, but we will go over that next time. In my opinion this is one of the most interesting and razor-sharp lines of the KID, with both sides racing to destroy each other first, white attacking on the queenside and black on the kingside. We'll see how next time.
Today was just the starting point of the series, and I did not do too much, because I wanted to lay out this opening for you first instead of dive-bombing straight into lines and variations.
Thanks you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it, have a great day and I will see you next time.