Philidor defence - Help me learn

The only real reason to play the Pirc Move order would be to try and trick white.

Black uses the Pirc Move order to trick white into playing the Philidor Defence/Hanham Variation while avoiding the 4.Bc4 lines.

If I use the stand move order of the Philidor you will see what I mean.

In the below Diagram.

When Black plays the Pirc Move order it tricks white.

White gets tricked because white believes black is playing the Pirc.

In which case white will respond how they normally respond against the Pirc.

Which black is playing the Pirc but they will tranpose out of it.

As you can see and read from the above diagram.

After black plays 3...e5

White is faced with a problem of what to do.

White has often gone ahead and played.

4.Nf3 which I will show you in the below diagram.

You might ask the question's:

Why does black try to trick white?

To avoid the 4.Bc4 lines

What is so bad about the 4.Bc4 line which is causing black to do a move order trick?

I am not Philidor Defence expert, but I believe the issue is white can try and do some very annoying forcing lines.

Which in some cases result in the loss of a pawn.

In other cases it results in the lost of the bishop pair.

I will not explained all the above moves.

However, you can see how they are annoying and end up like the text I said in red.

If black doesn't play 4...c6

He can end up in some matting patterns similar to the ones Skotheim showed in his one diagram.

The main line move order of the g4 move.

Which is known as the Shirov Gambit.

I don't know what the best black response is after 5.g4.

However, the moves 5...h6 and 5...g6  both have been played and seem to be doing fairly ok for black in stats compared to the move 5...Nxg4 which seems to be in whites favor.

The Philidor Defence/Hanham Variation seems to be one of the most loved variations in the Philidor for black.

I do believe there has been alot of GM's who have used it.

I do not know for 100% certain but I do believe they use the Pirc move order.

However, I still fancy the main line move order myself.

I often do not like going into the Hanham Variation.

If white choses to play 3.d4 I personally prefer the Exchange Variation myself.

Which I believe is trending upwards.

François-André Danican Philidor

"Pawns are the soul of chess"

No other move order will ever fulfill Andre Philidor quote like the main line move order.

Pawns are the soul of chess and nothing demonstrates that better than seeing the d6 pawn defend its buddy the e5 pawn against Nf3.

Even if they refute the mainline Philidor move order.

I will still play the Philidor this way.

No other Philidor move order trick will ever live up to such expectations.

1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 e5 is almost the exclusive move order at high level, and less...

Just to reach 4.Nf3 Nbd7 5.Bc4 0-0 and we transposed into "normal" Philidor but avoiding some tricks...

True black has to think about the ending after 4.dxe5 but i dont think it brings white any advantage.

So why black did this way?

The historical move order has a problem :

Then comes another move order : 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 Nbd7 but there is another problem.

So this move order isnt really successful.

Another one was tried :

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 Nf6, but white can use another idea :

Then only one move order is used nowadays :

1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 e5 (!) 4.Nf3 Nbd7 and we transpose into normal positions after 5.Bc4 Be7, avoiding all the tricks i mentionned earlier.

What white can do against this move order?

Going for the ending is not very troublesome for black, so the last weapon for white is the Shirov gambit with 5.g4.

But anyway most like the positions for white after 5.Bc4 Be7, which are nevertheless rock solid for black and are rather flexible.

There are also some new ideas with Nb6 attacking Bc4, but it is another story...

Sorry yureesystem but u should update.

I think we have this answered. Thanks for all the comments! Especially thanks to BirdBrain and IM poucin, which has been the most help. Cheers!

IM Poucin wrote:

There are also some new ideas with Nb6 attacking Bc4, but it is another story...

Sorry yureesystem but u should update.  

Thank you for the information and correction, I stand corrected. I did noticed there is a lot draws with exchange of queens,double-pawn on e5,e6 and the bishop performing as a pawn on d6 and three pawn islands, this cannot be a good for black to play for a win, let say CM playing against a solid mid-2000 fide and the CM needs a win, and with this type of pawn structure formation for black this looks more drawish.

I believe poucin is half right and half wrong.

Thus, I disagree with poucin for the half of the text which I believe is incorrect.

The Historical move order has a problem if black is planning to play the Philidor Defence/Hanham Variation(3...Nd7) which I said on post #47

However, the Hanham variation with 3...Nd7 is not forced by black.

They can play other moves which I said on post #49

The move I like playing is 3...exd4 which is the Philidor Defence/Exchange Variation.

If black is perfectly comfortable with playing the Exchange Variation I see no reason why they should play any other move order other than the Historical move order.

Which would mean the historical move order would have no problem at all in getting into the exchange variation.

@X_Player??

I was talking about tranpositions to play the tabiya :

I didnt talk about exchange philidor which is another story...

Well the sentence you gave was a little vague.

The historical move order has a problem:

thats because historically, black used to play mostly the Hannam variation, not the exchange...

What do you do against when your opponent plays like f3 e4 d4 system with plans of g4 h5 like in the dragon, do you just stay in the middle and attack on queen side like I did, or was there a better plan?

Here are a couple of games I found in my database:

Thank you! I think I will play it tomorrow in my weekly tournament game. (First time to play it in long chess OTB)

This variation is crasy!! How do you play it?

FOS, what do you play against the KID?
I like the Saemish

FOS, what do you play against pirc/modern?
Saemish sounds good

FOS, what do you play againt a double finachetto opening?
I go for a Saemish

FOS, what about the French defense?
Saemish all the way baby

FOS, I have a strong algorithm for connect-four. Think you could beat it?
The Saemish never fails!

FOS, I'm hungry, what do you recommend I eat?
Have a Saemish

Wait, you're an 1.e4 player? That's funny :)

I was just joking around. Lots of space vs passive crap openings is the real test of course.

Yes, I tried to order it from good to silly ending with a play on words, saemish = sandwich.

That was one of the reasons I was not a big fan of playing the Philidor, that exact line.  Here are a couple of games, but seriously, Bauer covers that - you should get his book.