Advocating for 1.b3 and 1...b6: The Nimzo-Larsen Attack and the Modern Defense

I greatly respect GM blatny as a b6 player, i believe only miles played 1.b6 with any regularity and was a stronger GM than him, but the blatny ruy lopez was more a bamboozling weapon than a reliable defense and he got to play during the last stage of human chess where passing every opening through a computer was a necessity (early-mid 2000's)

I don't really want to dedicate a lot of time studying in depth an opening (specifically b6 Owen defense, b3 for white is fine) that the supercomputers thinks is probably losing. If it is indeed losing, there is something existentially meaningless in spending so much time on it. I mean, none of your opponents would probably find the forced win, but it would just give a feeling of "what I am spending my time on?" to me.

if you found out word of GOD that the modern benoni or the KID is a forced win by white by some 4500 ELO vodoo magic computer line that humans cant possibly memorize, would that affect if you played them?

as far as im aware, almost certainly winning starts at around 1.5 in stockfish engine eval, even openings that can start as high as 1+ if the engine slowly goes down over time , it just means they equalize slower than mainstream openings.

Owens is sounder than a latvian which is a forced lose and sounder than a czech benoni (Which often hovers in the 1.2-1.3 range) despite some masters having good faith in it. Owen's is at worse prob 0.8ish

Yes, I am looking at it with stockfish right now and the Owen Defense does indeed goes to a draw according to lichess' stockfish engine. Correct me if I am wrong, but I feel that the path to a draw is narrow, while the attacking possibilities for white are wide.

I have not study the Czech Benoni yet, but wow it does indeed spirals into a +2.3 for white at move 28 with my stockfish vs stockfish game. I didn't know it was so bad, as it doesn't look bad at first glance with my limited understanding of chess.

I don't want to aim low with my openings.

What if we stop aging and become super human in the future? Then we all have potential to play at the grandmaster and super grandmaster level eventually. I want to learn an opening where the potential is not capped.

I am looking at the Latvian right now, and there was a 2023 game where black played only the stockfish recommended move until move 25, and ended up as +1.1 for white, before starting to play suboptimal moves and losing.

https://lichess.org/atqt3qdt

The KID had played to a draw in ICCF world championships (which allows computer assistance and opening repertoires thousands of gigabytes in size).

Here is the game. The tournament was all draws except for someone who died.

https://www.iccf.com/game?id=1360183

its a thought experiment. whether they indeed draw or lose wasnt important

"Yes, I am looking at it with stockfish right now and the Owen Defense does indeed goes to a draw according to lichess' stockfish engine. Correct me if I am wrong, but I feel that the path to a draw is narrow, while the attacking possibilities for white are wide."

i mean thats fair but when people defend the owen's no one is saying its a defense as rich or equalizes as quick as the big four, they usually want to argue that its not busted and that its prob in the same tier as scandinavian/pirc/alekhine. the path to equality against critical line also gets narrow quickly there

what do ICCF games say about 1.e4 b6 2.d4 bb7 3.bd3 nf6 4.qe2 e6 5.nf3 d5? i think this is the soundest way to play it although the engine may disagree.

also for the latvian game you showed, i believe 10.ng3 is the superior line.

KID is pretty strong though and is something I take seriously as a d4 player. How about the Bongcloud as an example? I don't really want to spend time learning it right now as I am still building my base repertoire and haven't played a tournament yet, and I think one can find computer approved novelties in established openings.

Hikaru Nakamura plays the Bongcloud I guess so he is fine with theoretically losing lines on blitz.

Yeah but b6 is kinda ok the more I look at it. 3... d6 have good results in master tournaments for black, surprisingly.

Wow, don't hold back now! haha

According to my research, I would need to purchase the database from chessify if I want to look at it, sorry.

5... d5 is indeed the top choice according to lichess' stockfish at higher depth. A possible correspondence game with engines might look like this:

what about 7...qe7? i believe its considered an improvement nowadays

oh to defend the g-pawn with the bishop? Looks like black did not hold the draw in this around 30 depth stockfish game.

30 depth is pretty darn low for closed positions without a single trade...

Yeah, I will pay for the nextmove chess cloud computing in the future if I stick with chess.

well i appreciate what you shared with us nevertheless, thank you.

A $500 laptop can easily reach 50-ply or more with less than 10 minutes of "thought".

Yep!

If Super computer came out tomorrow saying the KID was refuted, It would be end!

I would have to pack up my chess board and go home!

I would either have to quit chess or find new line.

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Same thing happened to me in Checkers!

As soon as the computers take over, it is end of Chess as we know it.

A New Era will emerge and a lot of things would change!

I don't really see the point in setting the engine depth much more than 22 or so. Except maybe if you're analyzing an early opening. But in an complex position there is no world where you will ever play 22 moves of precision. You'll probably get better OTB results doing prep analysis with an even shallower depth than 22. Usually I just go 16 or so and I stop there.

Chess will never be played like checkers where people can just play perfectly OTB, that should be obvious.

If you want to play b6, play Queen's Indian or Nimzo (or even Bogo-indian if you're up for it)

Don't play owens. UNLESS you can manage to get a satisfactory setup with a petrosian Queen's Indian--like this one: