Owen's defence ?

Hi everybody,

I recently heard about an opening named "Owen's defence".

It is a quite good opening. GM Igor Smirnov made video lessons about this opening. If you watch those videos, you can understand and play it very well.
Part 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-ACdKjp4QQ
Part 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpEJdebvXQY

It's a horrible opening for Black.  White should never advance the c-pawn in these lines, and basic setup with e4, d4, Nf3, Nc3, Bd3, etc. and Black is in trouble.  White has all the trumps, including everything from owning the center to often having opportunities at the Greek Gift Sacrifice, a sacrifice most people associate more with the Colle System.  Happens here a lot as well.

It's an interesting opening. There exists a gambit line for black playing f5 in the right moment. The variations are wild and crazy, and a non prepared white-player comes into great troubles.

Why is it horrible for black? Could you set up a normal position? (Where black plays well, but it is still better for white) I think Smirnov told everything about these lines, so I dont think there is a position where black is not equal.

And it is totally unknown. I played once in real life game against a stronger opponent (I dont remember well, but about 18xx Fide rating could be his rating) where he totally did not know what to do. He made the strategically worst moves. (which are normal moves, but for example I could easily take his center) I saw on him, it was a totally unknown area for him, from MY FIRST MOVE! And it is a big advantage of this opening.
So in practice it can be much better than let me say the sicilian defense.

I played this as White (or rather against it) and I had a basic set up involving 1. e4 b6 2. d4 Bb7 3. Bd3 e6 4. c3 d5 5. e5 c5 6. Nf3 Ne7 7. 0-0 Ng6  8. Be3 c4 and played 9. Be2 which lessened Black's tension. I should have played 9. Bc2 and then began attacking the pawn chain to simplify into a positionally winning endgame. By not doing so, I ended up allowing Black to have a near equal standing. In the ending, Black simplified to an imbalance of K + 7p v. K + N+ 5p. The ending looked like this:

Had I taken the Knight, Black would have promoted as well and would be able to get his King to b8, with a draw.

After playing, I found that this was the right way to go in the opening save for my 9th move. 9. Bc2 gives White significant advantage in the late opening and early middle game.

Here was what the opening looked like at the 9th move.

vengence69, your example was great, it is a typical example of how NOT TO PLAY this opening as black. After the move c3, white should not play d5, it is just closes the diagonal for the bishop. But of course in itself it is not a mistake. Black could play Ba6 at some point, and the bishop would be active on the a6, or would be exchanged, and that would be a better position for black because after exchange of light squared bishops black's bishop is better than white's one. But the main problem was that, white played c5, a good move, than he played c4? which is a very bad move. It keeps black's light squared bishop totally out of game, while white's light squared bishop would be quite active on c2.
So it was a good example how not to play this opening.

Hi, thanks for the answers !

Indeed, I've heard that this defence leads to an equal game in many lines. Moreover, it has a shocking effect on the non-prepared player.

But, in some books, such as NCO (Nunn Chess Openings) say :

Now, it may be true that the moves shown aren't the best or Nunn didn't think about all the lines, but the game is winning for White according to him.

So this oepning seems great, but I'm not absolutely sure that it's equalizing... What do you think ?

opening*

vengence69 wrote: "Had I taken the Knight, Black would have promoted as well and would be able to get his King to b8, with a draw."

NO. After 2. ... Nxc3 3. bxc3 bxc3 4. f7! c2 5. Kf6 c1=Q 6.e7 mate. Or 4. ... Ke7 5. Kg7 c2 8. f8=Q+ and 9. Qf1

That likely is a best play line but when I was looking at the ending with a friend who had played at the US Open in Vancouver, WA last year, we went through both an OTB analysis and computer analysis and both observations showed Black to have drawing chances in the ending. I will attempt to resurrect the game from an earlier posting.

So the only good point in this opening is the shocking effect ? If White knows the opening and is prepared, Black has no way to reach an equal position in the opening ?

I don't know about that but the position is just so easy to play and Black is jumping through all these hoops just to get a reasonable position. White just moves his pieces, watches out for Nb4 traps and gets a clear position to play. It seems like overkill to me.

It's a dreadful opening. It threatens nothing and hopes that White just doesn't know what to do or tries too hard to kill it.

By developing the QB first, the kingside development lags and the pieces tend not to have a lot of good squares. Play it at your own risk.

I'm intrigued over Black's third move in your line of play

all notes courtesy of "The B Formula" by Andrew Martin. Although my opening repertoire sucks bigtime, I have very limited time to study other aggressive openings. Breaktime's over, back to work!

I don't think a3 is a good move. It wastes time and runs into c5 where you say bye bye to your centre.

imo you should delay the development of the b-Knight, just play Bd3, Nf3 and Qe2. Ready to support your d pawn with c3.

Owen is strategically flawed. A fianchetto is meant to either protect your king or support a pawn advance on the other side like in the closed sicilian, Pirc, modern Benoni, Grunfeld, etc. Note that in every reputable opening after a fianchetto you try to push pawns on the other side, so that they are helped by your bishop (harder for the opponent to line up rooks on those files for example).

Fianchetto and then castle in the opposite side it's a bit of a contradiction. And if you want to castle queenside, it doesn't make sense to spend so much additional time (as black) to do so, as white can 0-0 much more quickly and dedicate himself to a faster pawnstorm.

Fianchetto queenside, Owen and Larsen, are inferior openings.

This does not mean that the other side should expect to win by force though...

strong argument.

In that situation the c and d pawns have moved making Bb4 possibly a problem.

Here if White simply doesn't move the c-pawn or the knight on b1 then it's not threatening at all.

Yes I didn't explain myself well. a3 is a decent move and nothing wrong with that.

I just meant that I prefer the setup with c3 instead, because I think it's good for white to keep the pawn centre duo. This centre is strong because any strike by black (d5 and maybe later on e5) will lead to closing off the bishop on b7.

Compare this with how easy it is for black to strike back against white's centre in e.g. the Pirc. This clearly shows how the Owen is inferior to other modern openings.

Your line is certainly playable (and still good for white), but you give black additional chances: