Hi BigTy,
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 Bc5!? 5.Bxf7+ seems to be the safest line for White, and I think should be enough for some advantage with best play.
5...Ke7 6.Bb3 Rf8 7.0-0 d6 8.Nc3 is mainline, and now one of the common tries, 8...h6, is surprisingly refuted by the (never played before!) 9.Nh7!! - 9...Nxh7 10.Nd5+ Ke8 11.Qh5+ +-
Instead 8...Qe8 is best (and most common), but after 9.d3 Black doesn't really have enough for the pawn.
Has anyone found a way to refute or get a big advantage against the traxler? I was looking in my database and black seems to be doing quite well, but alot of the games were from the old days, before computer analysis. I would like to play this crazy line as black, but if there is a clear refutation I will have to save it for blitz games only, if that. There seems to be alot of drawing lines, but I haven't found a forced win for white yet in the Nxf7 lines. So what is the current theoretical status?