Opinion Of The Owen’s

so you like stating random stuff in the middle of arguments. Gotcha. 

fairest thing i read all day. well besides the pfren comparison.

but i can assure you, people know my repertoire. in practice it has never been much of a disadvantage.  what ever home cook prepped they have, its unlikely to be something i havent seen and even if they could surprise. Its not like i only play 1.b6. You will have to prepare just as well for everything else i play so all your work may at best have a coin flip chance of being seen, not to mention some lines give me choices.

What ends up happening is, people give up on refuting you and just play a normal game of chess, as you wisely recommend

The same goes for things like the Smith-Morra.  I know people who swear by it, despite the fact that they consistently get worse positions out of the opening.  Some people are just masochistic and enjoy playing from bad positions.  To each their own, but to claim their opinion is objective is asinine.

This is the advantage of playing _one_ offbeat opening: There's only so much theory to learn, after a while you have seen it all. And you can spend your time studying the middlegame and endgame instead. So far from being a negative of Owen's Defense, it's entirely normal and expected.

The drawback is also well known. Whatever your Elo today, as you improve you will eventually face opponents who will make you hate your offbeat opening. At that time you will have to switch and learn a "good" opening from scratch. So why not switch _today_ and save yourself some pain later? The first answer is that mainline openings are a lot of work, see previous paragraph. The second answer is that maybe you never will be strong enough for it to matter. If your offbeat opening only "works" up to rating X, does that matter to someone who is rated X-1000? For most people, becoming so strong that their openings aren't good enough anymore would be a nice problem to have.

As for opponents preparing against you, there is a paradox seen with "rubbish" openings. Future white player sits down to prepare, picks a line (any line really), decides it looks good for white, and cuts the prepration short. There are so many other more critical openings to prepare against, can't be wasting time on this rubbish where it's so easy to get an obvious advantage. Then they play a game in their prep, it "works" exactly as planned, and if by chance they happen to lose then it wasn't because of the opening. Just luck, or a blunder, or whatever. We'll get 'em next time.

Of course, none of the above applies to IMs and GMs. That's why they don't play Owen's Defense(*). Amateurs have different considerations when choosing openings.

(*) Actually, sometimes they do.

You do realize this is an argument _for_ playing Owen's Defense as black....

It's an argument for making practical choices, and an argument against the idea that the Owen's is on the same level as the Latvian.

I've never wanted to play the Owen's myself, so it'd be a mistake to call me an advocate.

Laughs in Rapport.

sure, except

1. they are IM's and GM's that specialize in b6.

2. the paradox is not a real paradox. Virtually all the strong masters that play offbeat stuff regularly have very wide opening repertoires this increases the odds you will never have the proper prep. So yea, maybe you could prep a 22 move line for offbeat opening that is undesirable for your creative opponent,, it just so happens, he has one sideline, and 7 other things he can play,, many equally unusual.

Not true. I bet Carlsen is completely unprepared for 1. ...f6 yet would welcome it. 

b6 is just a queen's indian defence or similar played badly. I mean this is the thing about Owen's - at least with something like the Latvian or Muzio gambit you're getting some independent positions and imbalances that you could argue over, it's a subjective thing. With Owen's you're literally just in a standard position except worse.  

I agree.  There is some level of comfort in knowing a slightly dubious setup better than your opponents.  However, I would argue the instructional and theoretical value does not change much (if any).

To pull it into less debatable territory to make the point: Eric Rosen loves the Stafford Gambit.  He tried to get Fabiano to play it in a Titled Tuesday.  Fabi stated "I analyzed some lines and it was so bad I simply could not bring myself to play it.". Eric has played it and gotten some wins against some very strong players.  So who is correct?  I think the answer is both, from a certain point of view.  Fabi is looking at it objectively and seeing White can simply crush Black with proper play.  Eric is looking at it from the perspective of an all-out attack on the king, where one minor slip up from White leads to checkmate.  So, if your goal is to catch a few people in quick wins, it is an option for you.  If you are trying to find an objectively good defense, no so much.

While I would not categorize the Owen's at the same level of dubiousness as the Stafford, the same idea applies.  Those who like the few tricks in it will argue it is fun to play and/or they get good results with it.  Those that like to get to the truth of the matter will not be as optimistic.

In terms of helping a low-level player, it really depends on their goals.  If they want to improve, I would argue they should stick to more classical defenses.  If they just want to have fun, go for it.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I have a friend who played it exclusively until he was ~1800.  At that point, he started running into people who would punish him for it.  Instead of trying to learn the lines deeper and deeper, he switched to the Sicilian and has racked up several GM scraps (and is now rated about 20 points higher than our friend @darkorthodox88, who has been struggling to stay above 2200 for a few years now).  I do not bring that up to disparage him (well, maybe a little), but to point out their different approaches.  One stuck to the opening he likes and has stagnated.  The other realized he was hitting his head against the wall, adjusted, and continued progressing.

struggling? what gave you that idea? I havent played OTB in 5 years lmao. 

man if your friend coudnt handle playing 1.b6 at the 1800 level he just sucked playing it. 1800's dont know anything about opening play. your average 1800 , will learn a 5-7 move formation and call it a day lol.

i was beating 1800's with b6 when i didnt know what i was doing , for example in one of my most momentous wins ages ago as a scholastic player, my 1850 rated opponent went nc3,bd3 nge2 and i played bb4 lmao. This is an elementary mistake that an 1800 half the time woudnt know how to exploit. So im not buying this idea, that your friend reached 1800 and suddenly coudnt hack it because of the opening. 

Both moves are useful, as I don't have to explain to you. The b6, Bb7 idea takes two moves to develop a bishop to a diagonal that may not be even be right for it, while neglecting the fight for the centre represented by c5 or c6. Not only is it slow, it's too soon.

The same would be true for his opponents.

Preparation-wise, the biggest danger for an Owen's Defense player would be getting a worse version of some other defense (e.g. worse French, or worse Sicilian). Then, if white knows how to handle that French or Sicilian structure, black could be really hurting. In Thomas Kapitaniak's book b6! (The Chess Player: 1982), there are a few variations that are basically (by transposition) a Katalimov Sicilian, 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 b6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Bb7 5.Nc3 e6, which is considered a worse version of the Kan Sicilian,1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 a6 5.Nc3 b5. Black would be taking a huge risk going into that against some white players. There are other transpositional variations in his book, that's just one example.

Part of being experienced in _one_ offbeat defense would be knowing when adopting a French structure is okay or not, when adopting a Sicilian structure is okay or not, Hedgehog, Hippo, etc.

you know what this is called? an ad hoc explanation. c6 blocks a useful knight square and doesnt even develop a piece for it. And its primary formation advantage? it leds you develop the light squared bishop earlier than other openings before closing things up. a bishop that also often ends up harrassed.

sicilian is even less logical in this sense, many lines have yyou play 3-4 moves , none which aid in kingside castling.

of course my argument is not caro and sicilian are bad. Its a broader point. armchair arguments from move 1 or 2 from perfectly legitimate ideas dont meat squat. Owen's develops a piece, and attacks the center,and in that respect its on the same grounds as g6 (in fact unlike bg7, bb7 actively attacks something unguarded!). it doesnt speed up castling? well perhaps black shoudnt castle here (as in fact in many lines of the owens black should delay castling).

Lessons for a beginner: develop quickly, control the center, castle as soon as possible 

Also to the same beginner: You may want to delay castling here.

You just demonstrated why an aspiring beginner should not use it as it contradicts the information they are just learning.

Strong masters have different problems in the opening. The paradox I mentioned applies to preparation by the whites typically seen by an amateur Owen's Defense player. For those interested in why GMs might or might not want to play offbeat openings, Sadler and Regan's book Chess for Life (Gambit: 2016) has a chapter on Tony Miles' openings.

I think there is room in every amateur's repertoire for an offbeat opening. But if your repertoire for black vs 1.e4 is _all_ of Scandinavian, Alekhine, Nimzowitsch, and Owen's Defense, then you are getting all the slightly dodgy positions without actually saving yourself any time studying openings. Far more recommendable would be _one_ of the above, and _one_ of either 1...e5 or 1...c5. At first spend most time on the offbeat opening, then as you improve gradually add in more of the mainline opening.

this is 100% true. Black needs to know subtle differences to avoid being in just a worse variation of something else.

for example.

Yep, your last event was the Washington Chess Congress, where you only won 1 game and lost rating, leaving you sitting at exactly 2200.  Is anyone surprised you stopped competing before your rating fell back below 2200?

And are you being daft intentionally or does it come naturally?  He was 1800 when he switched.  He wasn't playing 1800s.  He was regularly playing 2000s, 2200s, and 2400s, who were punishing his opening choice.

arguing with non titled players is like winning the special olympics...

just like 1.c6  and 1.c5 violate those very principles. NEXT.heck the french greek gift is a rite of passage yet i dont see coaches terrified of teaching kids the french. 

read my lips . AD HOC explanation.

Like come on , dude the guy is learning to  not hang pieces, you really think his opponent could even penalize his castling if he did it?  its such a disingenuous objection. At his level he needs to play enough hundred games to develop basically tactical intuition and not quit out of boredom. his knowledge of opening just like his opponents will be absolutely elementary. He is hundreds of points too soon to even begin worrying about where castling might be a sublte  positional error. His opponents dont have the know how to exploit  it.

I'll chime in again and say Caruana has had a reputation for some time as a player who purposely goes into these sorts of positions (the engine says the eval is 0.8 against him, sometimes more) but he chose it because he noticed that intuitively good moves for his opponent are actually bad, and his opponents are unlikely to check this line deeply, because the engine says it's good for them.

Caruana also pointed out in an interview that all positions, when you prepare and analyze deeply enough, either end up as a draw or a win. So in that sense 0.8 doesn't actually mean anything bad if it's going to end up at 0.00, it's just a warning sign. In a real game, as long as you have an idea to leverage, and know where the pieces belong, you're going to do just fine.

And I've seen this for myself. One time I was trying to refute some position my opponent kept playing into, but as is typical of structures with pawns on d5 and e4, the engine was saying I had an advantage that didn't actually exist. You put 15 more moves on the board and the engine says oops, my bad, it's just 0.3 not 0.8... and since your hash isn't large enough, it wont remember that. It will send you down some rabbit hole of "oh this other line is 0.8, this time for sure..." but nope, it's not. The engine will never figure this out from the initial position. You always have to put more moves on the board to get a proper eval.

In the end it's better to play something that has ideas you understand and are excited about trying to leverage for a win than it is to chase some engine eval.