Owen's Defense or Nah?

Nakamura bullets are filled with 1. b3

Wow, this is a nice discussion.  I would have expected some noobie to just pull out an engine evaluation.

Ive chaired a few meetings

are you comfortable in very cramped positions and are a good defender? are you willing to do your research 10-15 moves deep in some of these lines? at the lower levels, owen's is very easy to play and deadly since below 2000 players, dont know the most testing lines.

Owen's suffers a bad reputation i believe bc some of the positions you get are definitely not to everyone's liking. think of slower french defenses, where black swamps on the queenside. surprisingly to many, the engine evaluations in these positions are actually not bad for black but they are very ugly to the player.

look at this position for examples, which often follows from the solid bd3, qe2 strategy. black will swamp the queenside, while white will begin an attack. would you be confortable in such a position? most players woudnt.

i love the owen's and the english defense, but i totally understand why people dont like these positions. they make the french advance lines look like open sicilians lol. i am a national master and play this stuff agaisnt master level opponents all the time with decent esults, but let me warn you, it is not easy, you have to be part masochist. 

check out this game, Dautov-Bauer 2005 to see two GM's play  the logical extreme of these positions

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1356046

Listen right...I'm a whole masochist, part sadist...

These are all incredibly helpful posts. Thank you.

Chess ans Aesthetics is a whole question though. Indeed perhaps Owen's retains its appeal for me because my attitude to Beauty differs from most peoples. Also perhaps I am intrinsically more comfortable in these sort of positions Mythopoeically speaking. Most people perhaps don't enjoy the 'Bad King,' feeling they get with Owen's. I'm a whole, 'Bad King Doing His Best With A Bad Hand,' in my default psychology, so Owen's feels like a comfy fit maybe?

i personally like the very closed nature of the game. They are 4 ways to play owen's though.

1. use it to tranpose to the hippo .

2. the french-like lines where black plays d5, c5 and so on

3. the classic owen's with e6 c5, nf6 be7, nc6, usually intending na5 and c5-c4 shenanigans.

4. the weird blatny ruy lopez. involving nc6 and e5. positions resemble e5 nimzowitsch.

and sometimes 5. you can get hedgehod positions, d6, a6, nf6 nbd7, be7. Very flexible and solid.

I do have a book on the hippo, I should indeed study the french but blatny ruy lopez and nimzowitsch are good ideas for further inquiry also hedgehog positions.

Its interesting because I don't think the world would have thought I would like closed positions. And yet I seem to thrive with the peril of strangulation lol Perhaps its that White Belt with two yellow tabs in Judo I got when I was 8 lol

It's not the book that's at issue. It's the slow-developing, mainly unthreatening opening.

unthreatening? i never got that impression. slow? well of course, its the whole point of the opening in half the lines!. if you like open games, b6 is not for you.

not that long ago carlsen destroyed eljanov with it in 29 moves

I actually have this book but have yet to study it properly. Still, I have taken to heart his enthusiasm for b6

Mostly Harmless

I'm going to read the Bauer today. Will let you know what I think

Assuming I can find it in the bankrupt second hand bookshop that is my flat...

you can also check the 1.b6 book by IM lakdawala. i find his writing style hilarious and the book is more thematic to read. but  Bauer's book is a classic.

Excellent. Good tip

If you go way back in the forums, you may find a comment of mine in another Owens Defense thread ages ago. I'll spare you the search:

About 1977-78, I tried to develop a repertoire with 1.b3 and 1...b6. 1.b3 was OK, but The Owens was a dog. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't already a very good chessplayer--expert and up. White is playing 1.e4 and you do nothing to either post a presence in the center with a pawn or seriously attack it. After 2 moves, you hit the e-pawn and White just develops Bd3  and still has no weaknesses. Meanwhile, you are still far from castling and in a very cramped position. It mainly taught me how to defend from terrible positions. Study it if you like, then get back to us in a year or so. We'll compare notes.

DrSpudnik. i must be the exception to the rule then, i played 1.b6 (and 1.nc6) exclusively since i was a scholastic player (1200) to now (2200). 

granted i think the reason you can get away with it at lower levels ,especially when you yourself dont know the most testing 10 move continuations is that your opponents virtually never do. most white players, play nc3 (and not the annoying nc3-bd3-nge2 line). at below 2000 level, which gives black a very easy game. 

but i think you must be exaggerating the difficulty. show me a line that gives black problems and i will show you my antidote to it. i happen to have researched almost all of the main refutation attempts, even the ones not mentioned in the Bauer and lakdawala book, and i have always found black comes out fine, if he knows what he is doing.

let me show you three lines that are almost never played that can give black problems if they dont know their opening inside and out. these are not covered by either bauer or lakdawala. white players should take notes.

bxc4 is tricky, especially if white developes blazingly fast, but be4 is extremely annoying. black is fine if he knows exactly what to do but i can assure you most owen players dont know how annoying this line is. the problem is that white's queen will pester black with moves like qg4 or threaten d4-d5.

where if black plays bb4, here white can choose from f3, qe2 or qc2 and the ideal reply to each is different from each other! virtually in all lines of the owen's playing c4 doesnt work bc black lashes a quick nc6! and nb4 grabbing the scary d3 bishop but sadly here it doesnt work bc nd2 allows b1 as a safe square for the bishop.

F4 is more dangerous than it is usually credited for. the thing is, f4 allows the queen to protect g2. if black plays 5...d5, then 6.e5, gives white an arguably superior version of the 5. nf3 d5 lines bc white already has f4 rolling.  normally, especially in blitz games which is where i see f4, after 5...c5 6.c3?! cxd4 7.cxd4 nc6 with nb4 coming is good for black, and if 6.nf3, both the quirky 6...c4!? and nc6 work well for black. But 5...c5 6.d5! is annoying as white will follow with c4. for example 6.d5 exd5 7.cxd5+ qe7 (forced) 8.c4 is just better for white.

now before you go about celebrating, black does have good replies for each of these, but these "refutations" are not well known even among owen players and can give you pretty swift victories.

pfren, i know some people dont like his prose, i myself find it second to none. some of the things he comes up with makes you want to read his books just for it.

as for his analysis, i havent read enough books of his besides the b6 book to opine. i find his analysis to be usually good although he is not 100% computer proof in it. the only BIG error in analysis that i recall in his b6 book was in a line of the nge2 variation

 where he recommends some dubious line i dont find convincing, and a6 is easily met by a4. 

i think there is some line in the english defense part of the book which is busted too ( i dont remember the exact line, but it involves getting greedy with one of white's pawns).

in this sense, the bauer book is more objective but it has omissions which lakdawala covers