In 1858 he won a game against Paul Morphy, which led to a match between the two. Despite being given odds of pawn and the move (meaning he started the game with an extra pawn and always moved first), Owen lost the match 6-1, never winning a game.
His performance in the 1862 London tournament, the first international round-robin event (in which each participant plays every other) was more impressive - he finished third, ahead of future world champion Wilhelm Steinitz, and was the only player to win against the tournament winner, Adolf Anderssen.
Owen is the eponym of Owen's Defence, a chess opening he often played (including in his victory over Morphy) characterised by the moves 1.e4 b6 (in algebraic notation).
External links
Article by Richard Forster on a match between Owen and Amos Burn (http://www.chesscafe.com/text/forster21.txt) (second part (http://www.chesscafe.com/text/forster22.txt))
Achim Engelhart's analysis of the Owen-Steinitz, London 1862 endgame (http://it.e-technik.uni-ulm.de/~engelhar/chess/owst1862.html)
When the great Russian player Mikhail Chigorin declined to participate in one of these "collaborations", Dadian stopped Chigorin from competing in the 1903 Monaco tournament, as he was the tournament organizer.
The idea of a "flag" to see if a player had run out of time was first discussed at the end of the 1890's, but it took a few years until flags were fitted to all clocks.
Chess Fighters: The 1916 match between David Janowski and Charles Jaffe was notable for the hard fought nature of the games, with each game having an average length of 65 moves.
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