Kyle,
Here's a jumbled, but hopefully useful answer to your first comments.
As far as I can tell, Rogers played the WHITE side of the line (and won). I haven't looked up the other players.
I'm sorry if I misquoted/misrepresented your opinions.
Quote:... "opening books give White a very small edge" is tweaking what I said; I reported that they consider it slightly better for White, i.e. plus-over-equals.
I didn't mean to tweak what you said. I read +/= as White having a very small edge. I also read it as "slightly better for White". I'm going to argue that White has a larger edge (
+). This will be difficult to prove in part because there are so few games that are available and the evaluations will be highly subjective.
Stronger players than myself have lost to this variation, so my analysis will have to be pretty darned good to persuade you. I look forward to the challenge.
I agree that the stats alone don't prove whether the line is playable, but that it hasn't been played much by strong players (against each other) is important.
FYI:
The official designation of the position according to ECO is "A43", and the move order they give is 1.d4 c5 2.d5 e6 3.e4 ed5 4.ed5. When I analyse the lines, I'll try to point out some of the transpositional possibilities for both sides and I will also try to include a few complete games.