Tree path 5 levels King's Pawn Game › King's Knight Opening › Philidor Defense › Philidor Defense › Nimzowitsch Variation

C41

Philidor Defense: Nimzowitsch Variation

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Overview

Philidor Defense: Nimzowitsch Variation 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.

It begins with 6 plies and takes 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 Nf6 to reach the canonical position.

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

It branches into 4 notable variations — Philidor Defense: Lion Variation, Philidor Defense: Nimzowitsch Variation, Klein Variation, and others.

Together the deeper variations number 11 across the full subtree.

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: 6
Parent: Philidor Defense
Direct variations: 4
Total in subtree: 11

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

561,485 games · White 55.4% / Draw 5.1% / Black 39.5%

Moves	Games	W / D / B
dxe5	390,643
Nc3	102,711
Bc4	23,245
Bg5	15,448
Bd3	14,967
d5	7,072
c3	2,819
Nbd2	1,115

Source: Lichess Opening Explorer · cached 2026-09-26 01:26:06

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Variations (4)

Show all 11 sub-variations (full subtree)

Overview

Statistics from Lichess

Variations (4)

Related variations at the same level