I do believe this leads to solid play.. of course it is a line and some people may not follow it but i find it quite interesting... see the analysis below
I do find it interesting.. i see no reason to this failing... if black plays 4. nxe4 5. Qe2 F4 6. D3?
there is one line where black gains a minor piece but that requires 7-8 move calculation which is not possible at my level
Please let me know why this is not a thing and fails (There must be a reason)
Ye this doesnt really work ... in ur line nxe4 qe2 f5 d3 just nf6 seems to work fine for black and if nxe5 nd4 looks good for black.
It has been tried:
Stockfish also happily takes your central pawn 4...Nxe4.
The moves violates the principle of not moving a piece twice in the opening.
You can play it, but it leaves you at a small disadvantage, while with 4 Bb5 you get a small advantage.
It cannot fail horribly because the line 4...Nxe4 doesn't lead to anything concrete for black (after, say, 5.d4). A sample line from Komodo 8 runs as follows :
4.Nd5 Nxe4 5.d4 d6 6.Bd3 Nf6 7.Nxf6 gxf6 8. 0-0 Bg7= (about -0.1)
On the other hand, 4...Bc5 transposes to a sideline of the Rubinstein 4-knights with colours reversed (but no extra tempo since black saved a tempo by not playing Bb4), so this gives prospectless equality for White at best.
To sum up, 4.Nd5 "fails" in the sense that an opening for White should neither 1°) transpose to a line for Black without the extra tempo, nor 2°) equalize without at least some effort on Black's behalf. However, It is actually better than some openings who received a name :) .
By the way, the same position can be reached by 1.e3 e5 2.e4 Nf6 3.Nc3 Nc6 4.Nf3 Bb4 5.Nd5 Bc5, with an extra move on both sides. Intuitively an improvement can be found for White's first two moves, but the position is nevertheless equal after five moves.
I like the argument about the Rubinstein. However, that line is equal.
The most testing is 4...Nxe4.
@tpr Stockfish also happily takes your central pawn 4...Nxe4.
The moves violates the principle of not moving a piece twice in the opening.
You can play it, but it leaves you at a small disadvantage, while with 4 Bb5 you get a small advantage.
From my humble view, agree with that.
Of interest :
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesslike.pl?gid=1611207 Yes- this opening is not the most sound. But if black misses nd4 there are very promising lines of play. I found that players at my level do not play nd4 as i have played this in numerous scholastic tournaments
of course, kf7 is forced, otherwise nxc7 is going to wreck
You didn't, but if you ever do, make sure you give it an interesting name, something obscene.