This reminds me of a quip by Frank Teuton (NM from Canada) when he fell into a big hole in ECO's analysis:
Quote:"Somebody changed the theory since the last time I played this opening."
I remember the critical line being
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.d4 exd4 5.Nxd4 Nxe4 6.Nxe4 Qe7 7.f3 (instead of 7.Bd3)
7...d5 8.Bb5. Looking in the database now, this doesn't score so well for white, and indeed the strongest players are playing 7.Bd3. But I didn't look at any games in detail, so of course it's just statistics,
caveat emptor, YMMV, etc.
Actually, this idea might be more relevant for black. How so? Well, after
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.a3 (Gunsberg Variation)
4...d5 5.exd5 Nxd5 6.Nxe5!? Nxe5 7.Qe2 was supposed to be tricky for black, because the "strongest" counter 7...f6 8.d4 Bb4 is disallowed by the pawn on a3. But it looks equal after
7...Bd6 8.Nxd5 O-O 9.d4 Bc5, because a2-a3 doesn't seem to make any difference here.