Today I saw a video showing a recent game between two IMs; it was made by the player who was Black. The opening went 1. d4 Nf6 2. g3 g6 3. Bg2 Bg7 4. e4 0-0 5. Ne2 d6 6. 0-0 e5 7. Nbc3 c6 8. a4 and now Nbd7, which was described as normal.

I was reminded of Edmar Mednis's view 50 years ago (annotating Benko-Fischer) that Black's last (allowing 9. a5, as played by Benko) is bad. Raymond Keene wrote something similar. However, 9. a5 was neither played in the recent game nor mentioned in the video.