recently I encountered a game which at first looked like it was going to be a pirc australian attack and then black just transposed into a philidor type position and just started to kill white who was rated 400 points higher. I looked into this opening and have tried it out in blitz beating lots of people easily, but somewhere in my mind I thought, "well, if this is such a good opening then why is there almost no material devoted to it.  There must be some line that just kills black and neither I nor anyone I played knew it."  So without further adu I bring you the Pirc/Philidor or whatever it is. 

What's wrong with 9. h3?

Seems like white are playing 1.e4 for the first time :)

 

4.f4?! -...  4.Nf3 with simpler positions. Less theory.. and not so easy to lose in 15 moves ;)

 

6.Nxd4?! -... 6.Qxd4!... I play sicilian with 3.Bb5 and in that line this idea is well covered. Whites queen is well placed in the center because blacks queens side knight is on d7. Qxd4 is the "natural" choice if black haven't/can't play Nc6. Threat c7-c5 looks immature to me.

 

7.Be3? - ... 7.Be2 with idea of 8.Bf3.. and there is nothing wrong with white. It's save to bet they would last at least another 20 moves. ;)

 

if you look at the moves list there are a lot of different options that are explored

 

Sorry Erad I've missed your Qd4 line.

Anyway in your Qd4 line white are helping as much as they can.

on 6.Qxd4 c6 7.Bc4? ... probably it's whites worst choice... 7.Be3!  .. look what I found:

7.Be3 d5 8.exd5 Bc5 9.Qd3 Qe7 10.Nd4 Nb6 11.dxc6 bxc6 12.Be2 O-O 13.Bg1 Qc7 14.Ne6 Bxe6 15.Bxc5 Rfd8 16.Qg3 Bc4 17.Bxb6 Qxb6 18.Bxc4 Re8 19.Kd2 Rad8 20.Kc1 Qd4 21.Bd3 Re3 22.Rd1 Rxg3 23.Bxh7

 

It's definitely a very complex game for both white and black. But claim white for lost in just 15 moves is too pessimistic. Most likely white are getting their compulsary +=== ;)

not trying to say that it's a forced loss or anything but when these are games in my database from 2300+ players on the white side and they are losing to 1800's, 2000's and 2200's with the exact positions that I showed above, I looked to find why this is bad for black and obviously neither I nor those 2300+ people playing the white side of the position knew what was going on.  I was personally wondering what was the right thing to do against it, as it seems that not many people understand all the resources in black's position.  It was a personal opening question of how do I fight against this with white.

Does your database have 9. h3 in the mainline of your diagram? White seems to have a bit of an edge in space. So there is no need to rush, just eliminate potential squares for the black pieces and try not to trade. 9. Be3 allowing 9. ... Ng4 looks like a mistake.

If you want to play it solid - 4.Nf3 transposes into a positional philidor - just make sure to prevent black's queenside expansion with a4.

If you're ready to jump into the complications, then, the line pointed by lubo (6.Qxd4 and 7.Be3) is probably the way to go, but it's very complicated and dangerous for white