Anonymous3 wrote on 11/24/13 at 22:02:23:
In the June 2004 1 e4 e5 update,
http://www.chesspublishing.com/content/1/jun04.htm, Nigel Davies states that after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 6.Qe2 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.c3 0-0 9.Rd1 Na5 10.Bc2 c5 11.d4 Qc7, "I suspect that the only challenging move is 12.d5" (and this is recommended in the book Play the Ruy Lopez). However, in his book Play 1 e4 e5! he doesn't even mention 12.d5. Davies also doesn't mention White's d5 idea in the very similar 9.h3 Na5 10.Bc2 c5 11.d4 Qc7.
I've grown to expect good sense and clear explanations from Nigel Davies's books, rather than encyclopedic coverage. Nobody's perfect, and as we used to say, "even Homer nods".
As has been noted here many times before, the 'complete annotated games' approach (as opposed to the 'variation tree' format) is very prone to such gaps in coverage.
I suppose that in mitigation one can plead that at the time of publication (2005) Qe2 lines had been pretty much confined to being a minority interest among the GMs ever since the 1950s and it was only the following year (2006) that Greet's book began to stimulate some interest in them again.
But it's definitely an important omission, since 12 d5 is Greet's recommendation, has scored very well (64% from 252 games in Megabase 2013) and has been played at least six times by the main current GM supporter of Qe2 lines in the Spanish, Sergei Tiviakov.
However, I think we can definitely let Davies off the hook for not foreseeing that such an unlikely-looking move as 6 Qf3 in the Scotch would ever warrant serious coverage. Although it was played by Max Lange as early as 1862 (!) it really only began to take off as a serious try for advantage from 2006 onwards.