Bishop's Opening: Berlin Defense

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Overview

Bishop's Opening: Berlin Defense is a variation within the Open Games family, indexed as ECO C24.

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

Play reaches this position via 1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Nf6, after 4 plies of opening development.

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

It is the root of 8 named variations, with Greco Gambit, Bishop's Opening: Horwitz Gambit, Bishop's Opening: Kitchener Folly, and others among the most studied.

In total, the branch covers 12 sub-variations across 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: C24
Group: Open Games (C)
Plies: 4
Parent: Bishop's Opening
Direct variations: 8
Total in subtree: 12

This overview is generated automatically from the opening's metadata. Know this line well? Write a description — submissions are reviewed before publishing.

Statistics from Lichess

17,963,185 games · White 50.5% / Draw 4.2% / Black 45.3%

Moves	Games	W / D / B
d3	7,173,468
Nc3	3,726,492
Nf3	3,698,883
d4	1,736,226
Qf3	910,363
Bxf7+	200,411
c3	126,763
f4	113,397

Source: Lichess Opening Explorer · cached 2026-09-26 01:01:27

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Variations (8)

Show all 12 sub-variations (full subtree)

Overview

Statistics from Lichess

Variations (8)

Related variations at the same level