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

Owen's Defense is not a French Defense.  I play the former, and am pretty decent with the latter, but the purposes behind them are quite different.

In the French Defense 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 black has made a certain commitment to the center, and white can take a space advantage an temporarily restrain black's center.  Pressure on the d4 square eventually enables black to liberate his position, but the center generally remains closed.

Owen's Defense creates an open center by force.  You start 1. e4 e6 2. d4 b6 and after 3. ..Bb7 white must either advance the e-pawn, opening the long diagonal, or defend e4, which develops his pieces to relatively passive squares.  If white plays e5, f4, or c4, then the d-file can then be opened by force, and then black gets a blockade set up on d5, with the queen, a rook, or both supporting the minor piece(s) on d5.  If white's d-pawn falls, black wins.  Even if it doesn't, black has excellent counterplay.

In the French, there are usually only a few open lines (except in the Rubinstein, which is not often seen).  In the Owen, the center is largely open, and the tactics can get very sharp.  It's not for the timid.

I keep experimenting with hypermodern openings and I now believe that those openings are not for the faint-hearted because most of the time the positions just explode suddenly and it becomes extremely double edged.

Owen's Defense is an inferior defense when up against an accomplished player. They don't make any of the common mistakes that less accomplished players make. I can't tell you how many times I win White's e-pawn outright. They simply forget about the added pressure on the e-pawn because they're not used to confronting a bishop on b7 in a king pawn opening. Yet, this is a great defense against weaker players - or players who are unfamiliar with it. Let's face it, if it were a solid defense we'd see it more frequently at the higher levels; yet, we don't. That speaks volumes. Nonetheless, I play it - enjoy playing it - and win most of my games with it. 

I have to somewhat disagree with DSmith42 (above). The object in both the Owen and French is to attack White's center. The Owen initially tries to do it with minor pieces whereas the French mostly uses pawns. But the Owen player eventually will ultimately try to undermine White's center with pawns - it's just that he does it later rather than sooner. The pawn structures can often be very similar. So, I wouldn't say they were "quite different". 

Do people not realize how bad the owen is? It’s +0.8-1 for white depending on depth and engine

people dont know what they are talking about. i have seen stockfish 17 give evals as high as 1.5 in an opening and not realize even at depth 50 that no progress can be made. I also remember another position where i analyzed at high depth with both stockfish 17 and 16 at high depth, and the former gave some really worrisome number, when 16 only gave like 0.6 and when imput 16 's suggestion to 17, didnt change its eval but made no progress.

besides the modern engines have inflated eval values. a 0.8 now is closer to 0.5-0.6 in the past. similarly even some mainlines in the petroff get like a 0.4 are just dead equal.
owen's takes longer to equalize. None of the so called refutations work. i know, i analyzed virtually every single one. you can say something obvious like, its inferior to the big 4, well duh, i dont think any of its vindicators ever said its comparable. It takes longer to equalize and the critical lines have fairly narrow corridors, the top 4 usually have better evals (although even then, not always, some lines in the french classical give evals of 0.8 when its known to be even) and more passable sidelines

In what opening? Every opening at infinite depth is 0.0 because chess is clearly a draw at infinity. Nobody is suggesting the Owen's is a forced loss. You could have an opening that's refuted yet it's still 0.0 at infinity. So I don't know why you're inventing this strawman that we're saying the Owen's is a forced loss, that's not what refuted means and especially not what a bad opening means. Would you say the Wayward Queen attack is refuted? I would say it is - it doesn't lead to a forced loss but it's refuted because it does nothing for white and just loses a ton of time and position. That's what refuted means, not certain loss with optimal play. An opening refuted is world's away from meaning game over.

Furthermore, any other opening that gets a high plus for white out of the opening is used to unbalance the position and produce winning chances. So for example the Dutch can get horrible evaluations, especially people's pet lines that they invent themselves, but work incredibly well for their own blitz games. That's the reason why the Dutch or Benoni are still played despite how they show poor values - because of all the double edged play they get that can be tricky for a non-computer. The Owens has none of this, it's just bad and without any counterplay. It's also not even an unusual position that you could say you subjectively prefer it - it's just a completely misplayed queen's indian where black is struggling to get a decent game.

The other openings all have a point, not the Owen's. The only point is a perverse one that goes against the concept of giving your best attempt to win. So it's to be condemned and maybe it should even be outlawed as it's wilfully imposing a self-handicap.

owens is doubled edged idk what the heck you talking about.

other openings have a point, really? you mean to tell me, the scandinanvian (qxd5) , alekhine and modern "make more sense" than the owens lol. fianchetto openings have been accepted since the times of nimzo. nor is it like 1.g4 which weakens the kingside.

refutation means w.e people want it to mean. sometimes it does mean a forced loss, sometimes, it means a line is too practically difficult to be worth trying to play, sometimes, it means the critical line that gives the most eval +. sometimes, it means they are moves which are superior at doing exactly the same thing so the sideline has no purpose. My point is the same, it is not a forced loss and takes longer to equalize than the big 4. thats it.

"bad without any counterplay. REALLY? so the queenside pawnstorm, or nb4-ba6 or g5-h5 doesnt constitute counterplay? so everytime i play b6 i do nothing but coil up and wait for my opponent to blunder lmao get out of here.

My opinion on Owens has evolved after losing to it a couple times. It's still not something I wish to play, I don't find it inspiring, but it's more venomous than it seems by just looking at the eval... though I still haven't delved deeply into the theory to refute it because I just don't see it enough to do so. Which is probably the camp alot of people fall into. I'll get around to it eventually.

darkunorthodox you have an incredibly poor understanding of chess theory, like it's incredible you're a national master. It's like one of those bizarre peculiarities in nature that noone understands. Whatever, I have nothing else to add.

When I was a bad player, I thought the owens was okay. But as I got better the owens just became less and less respectable. Black just finds it difficult to get play.

yes, im a chess redneck, any other brilliant insights from the amateur peanut gallery?

Owens ia a terrible opening whoever this Owen guy is shoudl be ashamed of himself

which lines?

the higher you go the more you have to learn your opening. At the patzer level, owens wins you the e pawn like 30% of the time, after bb4, bxc3 and bxe4, obviously if black keeps winging it with little knowledge they will get wrecked. e.g white plays bd3, nc3 nge2 variation and they foolishly play the natural bb4, they will get wrecked with correct play.
i had to learn some owen lines 20 moves deep to not be blown off the board by someones prep.

owens beat morphy with it 1858

if you actually bothered to learn the theory, say by reading GM bauer's play b6 book ( an excellent but via no means exhaustive book) and find some specific line you dont agree with, im all ears. I been begging people to specify which line they think causes black so much grief. Alas i have yet to find it. @ibrust, i commend you for admitting what you did. i invite you to analyze some line and run it past me in the future.

i have even had the privilege of discussing critical lines with some of the best b6 players from IM odessky to GM smirnov. There was one line i hated seeing that i thought if not refuting was enough of a headache that i almost considered it damming despite rarely being played by white until Smirnov showed me black has nothing to worry about . Since then I have yet to find this holy grail refutation that leaves black with no play.

@darkunorthodox88 Since you issued the challenge I'll find some time to get around to it. But I'm not really aiming to refute the opening (I meant that in more of a rhetorical sense), mainly just aiming to get a comfortable edge in a position that's not entirely within the prep of most black players, where I can then play chess. Rarely do I chase after true "refutations" since they're usually partial, they're usually predictable and can be dealt with by via superior prep in most cases (the Yugoslav attack is a prime example of that - on lichess black actually has a positive winrate in that line, shockingly - I think it's mainly due to the prep advantage the dragon player has)

I always played the Nc3, Bd3, Nge2 variation ever since I read about it in some opening book around 1300, and I score very well with it. I think that if you need to prep 20 moves in some sideline opening then it's not a very good opening

So I had the first 4 or so moves mapped out, but just glancing a little bit deeper... I like the look of these lines:

Both these are quite rare... the e5 line has almost never been played and it's also sharp, which means a more narrow move tree, which I like.... This should go some ways to equalizing the difference in prep, which is the biggest thing I'm concerned with in Owens. I expect I'll need to prep these out to move 10-12 though, still alot of work but I'd be surprised if I ran into someone with 20 moves of prep here. But I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts, just bear in mind I don't care very much about maximizing my objective eval as white either @darkunorthodox88

Those 20 move theory lines are critical lines, not sidelines. You only need to prep if your opponent is playing like a 3000 engine half a game deep, in which case you better know what to do.

position 1 you play 4..nf6 not 4.bb4 since white has the possibility to play nge2 making bb4 look silly but even if you didnt.

is dead equal and would take black side anyday.

as for your 2nd position, nd2 is very rare here and was practically created by the engine (i played b6 all my life and never once seen it) and they are two ways to respond to it.

black gambits a pawn but whites queenside is a mess. black will play moves like e5 and d5 to undermine the center. 

if you dont like the pawn gambit line, you can also play this.