Interesting Way To Transpose into the French Defense from the Owen Defense

i can care less about a refuted defense, but lets speak facts and less blah blah shall we?

i would love to see any recommended deviations, but this whole defense is busted. when even with contempt factor blacks even is never below like +1.2 in white's favor, and just plain ugly positions.

idk why you avoid analyzing SPECIFIC lines in an opening forum. we have the equivalent of chess gods in our phone and you still want to engage in a priori opening pontification. 

I haven't seen @darkunorthodox88 in ages. Back from a tour or something?

What the hell are you talking about? I don't know whether you're trolling now or you're actually that ignorant but using computers as some kind of ultimate truth is bad enough, you certainly can't use computers to compare two wildly different openings. The Owen's is positionally bad while the Latvian is a gambit and has wild positions. 

Noone can deny that the Owen's is dog **** with almost no redeeming features whatsoever compared to standard or second tier openings and no serious player would ever play it except as a surprise weapon or psychological one. The Latvian and Owen's are both in that same level of "dubious but playable".  

In response to dark, take on f3 and then play 8...Nf6 or 8...Be7 and NOT the old ...Nc6 li es and Black is ok.  I myself play 8...Nf6 the rare few times that I play the Latvian, typically only in the final round of a short time control tourney like G/30 or G/60 where I have Black and must win - a draw is as good as a loss.

I have mentioned before the proble with the Owen's.  1.e4 b6?! 2.d4 Bb7 (or 2...e6, does not matter).  White should stay as non-committal on that e-file as long as possible and answer with 3.Bd3 with Nf3 coming.  If 2...Bb7 and 3...Nf6 immediately, 4.Nbd2!  Because of the Bishop already on d4, 3...f5 can be taken, answering 4...Bxg2 with the check.  Moment Nf3 is played, that trick is no longer an issue.

Then, depending on what Black does determines the fate of our c-pawn and Queen's Knight, like after 1.e4 b6 2.d4 Bb7 3.Bd3 e6 4.Nf3.  Any early d5 will be answered by e5.  Most attacks on the d-pawn, especially those with ...c5, will be answered by c3.  If Nbd2 is not forced by Black, it will often go to c3 after a trade on d4 and White has already castled.  Otherwise it will go to d2 with the Q going to e2 to connect the Rooks.  How white proceeds depends on Black.  Anything with a ...d5 will usually lead to a Kingside Attack.  The small center (e6 and d6) leads to different ideas for White.

this advice is 15 years out of date.
while small disagreements with engines is still possible (and mostly an error range 0.2-0.3 in eval) and mostly due to facing human opponent,s times have changed, not only are engines vastly stronger and better at evals than before, but now with the use of cloud engines, you have positions at depth 40 and 50 available at your fingertips. Thats levels of analysis vastly greater than human players. 

i dont know what you people are smoking, a defense yielding 1.8 as its main line, even with a standard deviation of 0.5 is still atrocious.

The days were you can play refuted openings and rely on your opponents ignorance are long gone. Any player worth their salt has their games in databases, and the minute someone knows you play stuff like this, they just need a 10 minute session with Houdini and the cloud to cook you alive.Which is why comparing the latvian and the Owens is absurd. the latter means you are down maybe 0.5 and will take longer to equalize, the former is a recipe for a guaranteed loss with mere intel from a prepared opponent.

"In response to dark, take on f3 and then play 8...Nf6 or 8...Be7 and NOT the old ...Nc6 li es and Black is ok.  I myself play 8...Nf6 the rare few times that I play the Latvian, typically only in the final round of a short time control tourney like G/30 or G/60 where I have Black and must win - a draw is as good as a loss."

so basically, you are just playing to swindle? thats not dubious that's hope chess. 

and blacks position is falling apart. you have bd3 and nd5 threats on the horizon and the king rook will enter the attack soon. I cant believe i actually have to prove such bad defense is refuted. This borders on common knowledge now with access to cloud engines. This aint the 90's where humans are trying to work out the details in chess forums quoting obscure opening manuals. Really bad defense have no vindication other than your opponents ignorance.

i cant cover every sideline in one post, but thats the problem with doing a 4 or 5 move analysis thriller!

Dark, the line you call "least complex" is completely avoidable by White.  Similar to the Stonewall Dutch for Black (playing 7...Qe7).  You play 8.Qe2 first before Castling.  Now you are confined to your first 2 lines.

3 not 2.  black can it via early c4, early g5 or this.

qe2 with nbd2 dont synergize well. 

Wow, you're all confused. 0.2 difference between engines? First of all, a pawn in stockfish is very different to a pawn in houdini. Stockfish is known for giving much higher positional readings, it's just how it is.  

Go to lichess and the opening explorer. Look up the Latvian Gambit and you will find its cloud results (that's depth up to ~45 sometimes). It goes to 1.6, then the next best move it's 1.2, the next it might be 0.8, it could go all the way up to 1.8 and so on. Even in the same engine it's different every time. This is to be expected with such an unstable opening like the Latvian gambit.  

You seem to think that as computers got more advanced then this would change and there'd be some sort of "ultimate truth". Even if a computer could calculate everything it wouldn't be that relevant for human play, it wouldn't give a human better chances to win if it wasn't a human position and they didn't understand it.  

What a computer says is the evaluation is not always relevant to what a human should play, it can be an indicator sometimes. 

not having ultimate truth =/= engine analysis is as close as we can get in analyze these lousy lines. Just because a human cant from the top of his head refute a line doesnt mean its not objectively bad. 

and being 1.2 in the first 10 moves is BAD.

the wiggle room you are talking about is contempt factor, which tends to evaluate your position "better" when its your turn, the truth being usually in between. and being between 1.8 and 1.2 is NOT a good sign.

and you are absolutely right about different engines being calibrated different. I prefer stockfish and houdini's best due to their conservative natures, but when you compare engine evals, you do a pattern where you can tell the drift between. They mean roughly the same but are calibrated to show different numerical values. (this is also why different engines evaluate first move advantage differently, some give that extra move a 0.2 others a 0.33 etc).

yes, sometimes, if by sometimes, you mean like 90+% of the time! There is nothing wrong with picking sidelines and sup-optimal moves in openings if it has some tangible advantage agaisnt human players,but its objectivity what's at stake here. What a human should play is either 1.the best move 2. a respectable secondary move with some specific strategic advantage. crap gambits offer neither. just hope chess.

The discrepancy you see in cloud settings is often 1. different engines, 2. same engines, but readings at lower depths of different sidelines. of course you will see large discrepancies, apples and oranges. Stick to one of the top latest engines

The latvian is virtually refuted, engine matches strongly favor white and the search for a proper defense by centurions has proven futile.

Who the hell plays the latvian in correspondence chess?

You did not display the line I claimed was avoided.  Your 8...cxd4 9.cxd4 Ba6 line is the line I claim is impossible if White plays the Q before castling.

ICCF players.  Not chess.com scrubs.

of course not, what's your point? qe2, doesnt allow black to trade away his bad bishop right away,, but white cannot stop it favorably. the lines with a5 are better anyways, i just mentioned an alternative

a5 is flexible and arguably best, early g5 is for more aggressive play, early ba6 is mostly if you want an early endgame and the dynamism is, white's space advantage vs black's superior bishop.

regardless, i dont see where you see dubious in any of the lines i mentioned. 

Which ICCF players?

In which games?

Let's see.  This is strictly games that ended in the month of May

Ivo Graber (2217) played it

Masuzyo Chilwesa played it.

April

Zdeno Barbalic (2081) played it

Eric Lebeveu (1490) played it

If I look at all games that ended in 2019 (64282 games):

It was played 43 times in games that ended in 2019.  Black won 7 of them with 4 draws.

Most people who play chess are classically trained, @ThrillerFan, and the Owen simply doesn't work that way.  Unlike some openings (like the French Defense) which kind of work in both a classical and hypermodern sense (though better in the latter, in my experience), the Owen Defense does NOT work if playing in the classical style.

John Owen beat Wilhelm Steinitz with this defense.  I know at least one local GM in my area plays it as his standard.  It's neither dubious nor unsound, it just has to be played in the hypermodern style, which many folks (including the Expert level) never bother to learn.

Steinitz & Tarrasch proved you can get to low-master level (about 2200 rating) without knowing a lick about hypermodernism, but you can't play hypermodern openings effectively with Tarrasch's dogmatic approach.  I would not have been able to use it effectively before I read My System, but since I have it has become a very effective weapon for me.