White to play and get a sizable advantage.

Black has just played a6 in the position below in order to prevent any Bb5+ stuff that would irritate him.

How should white approach the position? Those of you who post the solution likely used a computer to solve it because it is much too hard to figure out key differences.

At first, the position looks very boring and simple, but on the contrary: white has a (words on right are highlighted white) '"computer" like way of acquiring an obvious advantage. This position has many ways of being approached, almost like a personality test.

So basically, "let me see if you can solve it, but if you post the solution I won't believe you anyway"

To be fair that's probably true in my case lol.

Give me some credit: I said likely, nothing is impossible. Now that I look at this thread, sometimes I think if I even care about the forums anymore, I haven't see any exciting chess positions, or chess positions that peak my interest any more.

Therefore I make the rest of you suffer with my boring questions.

I like the look of somehow combining Qa4+ b5 Bxb5 axb5 Qxb5+ with the decoy move e4.

Don't worry I know it's bollocks, as I didn't use an engine.

Self-hater much? Maybe you should find a therapy site instead of this one.

What about f3, with the intent of e4?  the knight can always move to c4 if threatened, where it is protected by the d2 bishop.

I like the positions you post.  I looked at it for a while on my own, then looked at it for a while with a computer.

Some of the first moves I considered were Qa5+, Re1, f3, and e4.  Qa5 was a funny one... I looked at all the responses that made it ok and at the very end I noticed b5 makes it look stupid haha.

As for the computer's suggestion, I did not see that it was good on my own, but I like lines like my computer suggested.  I'm reminded of a old quote I read somewhere that read something like this: "If you want to play a certain move, but it looks bad, look harder!  Make it work!"

Oh, and I dismissed BQ's idea of dxc5 because black recaptures with development.  But it leaves the game pretty equal (IMO) and so it's good to remind myself that these ideas are sometimes much better than some pawn sacrifice ideas I was looking at e.g. f3 cxd e4 Bc6 Nxc6 bxc and white claims minor pieces / pawns make up for his sacrifice.  I probably woudn't play this in a serious game but I looked at it for a while.

f3 is what I am looking at.  With lines that invole exchanging the knight for the bishop and Qa4.  AWhite get's developed and compensated for the pawn, and like gets the pawn back fairly quickly.  I only looked for 2 or 3 minutes, so I might be missing an obvious refutation.

If it's a tactical solution, it probably starts with Qa4+ when if b5 Bxb5