Eeeek! I have to confess, I've been feeling so guilty about this thread that I've seriously contemplated asking the moderator to delete it! There [i]was[/i] an idea behind the wild 4 ...b5, namely the pious hope that the critical line might be one where Black advantageously snaffled a centre for a flank pawn and then survived, but I fear it just ain't happening. I knew I'd rejected 5 Nb5 Be4?? for a concrete reason (apart from it just not looking right), and looking at it again this must surely have been 6 Be4 Ne4 7 Qf3 d5 8 Bf4, which is pretty terminal, is it not?

Well, fair enough -- it was a rather frivolous idea! (And besides, losing a tempo is rarely a good idea in chess, outside specific endgame conditions.) I was hoping (I was assuming 5 Nb5 [i]Ne4[/i]) that there might be some mileage in 'forcing' White to let Black exchange a wing for a centre pawn, then playing with a small centre (d6, e6 [or even g6]). But I can appreciate that White's better pawn structure, extra space and lead in development should count for more, even if it might not be very easy to make progress.

In the position after 1 e4 b6 2 d4 Bb7 3 Bd3 Nf6 4 Nc3, late one night after -- honest! -- only a couple of drinks, I began to wonder about the rather bizarre 4 ...b5!?. There seems to be no obvious refutation, and so the question might arise, can White can get a bigger advantage than in any other Owen's main line? One of the points is that, since Black will usually (though by no means inevitably) follow up with ...e6 and ...Be7, in positions where he has a pawn on b4 White's undermining c2--c3 won't have the force it has in Modern Defence positions. Also it's generally useful that a8 is defended.

So, does this weird move have a right to exist, and what's White's strongest line? Perhaps White should chuck 5 a3 in, but really at the moment I'm not sure what's best ...