I disagree. It's an even worse time than ever. It blocks off useful escapes from 8... b5 and we don't even have our rooks together yet. 8. d3 is better if you just want to get the bishop out.
So far we have two votes for d4, one for Qb3, and one for Nc3. I will support Qb3 or d3 if nobody else likes Nc3, since either of those are better than d4 in my opinion.
I'm open to revise my suggested d4, as I've no problems to believe that it's
not the best move. But I would like to share what lead me there just to see how far I could be from pursuing a good reasoning.
Beside opening the route for the bishop, the idea behind d4 is to contrast the power that Black has gained in the centre of the chessboard. This would happen (IMVHO) by swapping d4 with the pawn in c5, opening for us the d file where Queen and Rook could attack togheter.
If Black attacks Queen with b5 or Nb6, then we could still move Qd3, Qc2, Qc3, Qb3 and then swap the pawns.
About Qb3 seems to me a bit of a waste move, with any gain for us, while your Nc3 helps to attack the center squares.
Thoughts?
PS:
Sorry for the long and probably hard to read post, but it is the first time I
1) play chess on internet,
2) play chess in English,
3) use algebric notation.
My following posts will be shorter.
