Philidor counter gambit literature?

Hi! 

Does anybody have any links to literature for the philidor counter gambit? 

I tried finding a James West pdf online but it's impossible to download anything for free. Strange, considering I got many chess book pdfs without problems. 

Can anybody recommend a site with free accessible literature on the philidor counter gambit, or at least give me the names of other authors that  cover this topic? Thanks

try downloading it for free on Booksee.org

I don't know any litterature (from black's point of view) on it because it is just crap.

At least, u can find some refutations in some books for white (few cover it though!).

Personnally, i prefer this one because simple and so effective :

Thanks a lot for all the comments.

@ IM Poucin :  I dare not to argue with you about whether the philidor counter Gambit is good enough or not because I'm way below your level :-D 

But I have actually heard in a video by James West that the opening has such a low reputation because  theoreticians since Wilhelm Steinitz have published a lot of negative comments about it. But allegedly people like Morphy have won with it ( allegedly Steinitz tried to discredit  the philidor counter Gambit  for the main reason that he was envious of Morphy) and  some modern  grandmasters actually also said that  its positions after the opening are rather unclear and not necessarily too advantageous for white.

James West also says that in the philidor counter Gambit you don't count material , you count tempos ( white seems to be doing too many moves with its King's Knight).

I don't know any details, for that I would have to read James West's book, and for that I need to find it first.

@ kingella  thanks a lot for the tip, I will try it.

The main reason for me to get interested in this opening (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that I'm a low level player who is just choosing his first openings to learn,  and after looking at some statistics I found out that a vast majority of white players in the open game plays the King's Knight to f 3 on their second move. So I assume, if my opponents on the same level as me study any openings, they will probably start with openings beginning with 2...Nf3. 

For this reason, if I'm going to invest time into learning one opening, I guess I can reap the most benefit from learning a surprising defence to one of the most common moves. the philidor counter Gambit might not be a sound opening on the highest level, but I will never get to that level anyway, so I think at my current level it is the One opening That can benefit me most.

Sorry, it should be 2... Nc6

i don't know this James West, maybe the Wild Wild West hero?

Playing bad openings (this one is really really bad, almost lost at move 3!) is not good if u want to improve.

If u want to play f5, play Latvian gambit.

It is also bad but not as bad as this Philidor Counter gambit.

If u want to play "economical", then i suggest u to play the french.

This is james West :-D https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6pKmzyukGQs

a lecture by this West, almost 45 min with a meaningless game (all this time for that??)...

Really bad lecturer/teacher (sorry for him but mostly for the students listening him). This guy is rated about 1950, u shouldn't trust him on an obscure line...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY4qdkiQY_U

GM Negi decorates 3...f5 with a question mark (rightly, of course) and dismisses the line briefly with 4.Nc3 fxe4 5.Nxe4 d5 6.Neg5 h6 (6...e4 7.Ne5) 7.Nf7! Kxf7 8.Ne5+ winning.

I guess 5...Nf6 is a better move (at least it does not lose by force), but only an idiot would like to play this as Black.

I think that the Jaenisch 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 f5 is probably better than both the Latvian gambit and the Philidor CG.  GM Ivan Sokolov has a book called Ruy Lopez Revisited which explores the Jaenisch.

Jim's chess channel (YouTube), Blitz chess postmortem #31: Philidor counter-gambit.  He reviews a game he played and talks about how to play against that defense.

"I tried finding a James West pdf online but it's impossible to download anything for free. Strange, considering I got many chess book pdfs without problems."

James West devoted a lot of time and effort to writing his little book, why should you feel entitled to take his work for free? Why don't you pay for what you take? You can get the book from Amazon for next to nothing.

It's always a great idea spending money to buy useless things.

Jim West in person has said in a recent YouTube video that he gave up on the gambit because of 4.Bc4.

Apparently there are many ways to kill a corpse.

pfren, I certainly wasn't suggesting that the OP should play the gambit! But I do think that chess writers should get paid for their work instead of having it illegally downloaded.

I agree on that of course. But how much is worth an old book on an opening which is labelled as refuted by the book author?

Well, it wouldn't be number one on my list of books that I just had to have! 

I unsound won't recommend it.

Interesting that he himself considers it refuted. Nevertheless, it would be very useful to me. For a grandmaster, 4.Bc4 might be a reason to abandon the opening because best play would lead to a position where white is favoured, which in turn would lead to a win for white at grandmaster level. But most players in the world are not grandmasters, and their opponents will not know how to get an advantage after 4.Bc4, or how to use that advantage to actually win in the end. Most players don't make perfect moves all the time; most players make mistakes. so for most players the opening can be a good surprise weapon against King's Knight openings with an unclear end.