Tree path 3 levels King's Pawn Game › King's Knight Opening › Philidor Defense
C41

Philidor Defense

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Overview

Philidor Defense is a variation within the Open Games family, indexed as ECO C41.

The Open Games group covers open games — classical 1.e4 e5 openings where both sides contest the centre directly with pawns.

The line arises from 4 plies — specifically the moves 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6.

It is a variation of King's Knight Opening, which itself descends from the root opening King's Pawn Game.

It branches into 2 notable variations — Philidor Defense, Philidor Defense.

Counted recursively, this branch covers 41 sub-variations at all depths.

Step through the moves on the interactive board below, review the live Lichess statistics, or play this position against Stockfish at one of six difficulty levels.

ECO code
C41
Group
Open Games (C)
Plies
4
Parent
King's Knight Opening
Direct variations
2
Total in subtree
41

This overview is generated automatically from the opening's metadata. A more detailed, human-written description is on the way — and you can speed it up by suggesting one yourself.

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Variations (2)

Show all 41 sub-variations (full subtree)