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As white, I often encounter the Philidor defense by black: 

[FEN ""]

1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 d6

I usually play Nc3 or d4 on the next move, but is this the best move? What are some lines (advantages or disadvantages) against the Philidor?

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1  
Reminds one of the Légal Trap - 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3. Bc4 d6 4. Nc3 Bg4 5. h3 Bh5 6. Nxe5 Bxd1 Bxf7+ Ke7 7. Nd5#) – Daniel δ♦ May 9 '12 at 14:25
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These traps are great in theory, but I hardly find one who falls for them nowadays – xaisoft May 9 '12 at 14:31
Yeah, I wouldn't go for it as White or fall for it as Black. – Daniel δ♦ May 9 '12 at 14:40
@Danielδ could you update your comment? The second and third moves for black are the same(d6) – altvali May 17 '12 at 6:56
Oops... should be 2. ... Nc6 Sorry! – Daniel δ♦ May 17 '12 at 14:11

2 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

3. d4 is the usual move after 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6. Chess Opening Theory states that it is probably the best move, and also concedes 3. Bc4:

The best move is probably 3. d4. White threatens a queen exchange with dxe5 dxe5 Qxd8+ Kxd8 and Black can forget about castling. It puts pressure on the center and the Black fortress may collapse at any time.

Another possibility is 3. Bc4 leading to a more positional game, playable for both camps.

Fred Reinfeld suggests the following line (exclamation marks are his) as in this game. White maintains a sharp edge:

[FEN ""]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3.d4 exd4 4. Qxd4! Nc6 5. Bb5! Bd7 6. Bxc6 Bxc6 7. Nc3 Nf6 8. Bg5 Be7 9. O-O-O

A good resource to study would be shredderchess.com's opening database.

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Daniel, thanks for the great insight. By the way, what did you use to make your image? – xaisoft May 9 '12 at 15:00
I'm a free member of chess.com. What I did here was go to the chessgames.com game I linked above, view the PGN, copy it, go to chess.com forums and opened a new post, clicked on the "Insert position" icon, and copied the PGN file into the popup. Then I clicked through to move 9 and took a screenshot, saved it, and uploaded it. Too complicated :) – Daniel δ♦ May 9 '12 at 15:08
Yeah, having some way to do this automatically while adding content here would be awesome. Even if it required typing/pasting in PGN or FEN. – Wes Freeman May 9 '12 at 15:21
chessvideos.tv/chess-diagram-generator.php also works well for creating diagrams - you can setup a position or paste a FEN string. For pgn, try the Game Replayer – Andrew♦ May 9 '12 at 15:29
The Reinfeld reference is a bit outdated, I believe current praxis is not to play 4...Nc6 but 4...a6. Instead of 4. Qxd4, 4. Nxd4 is preferred. – PeskyGnat May 9 '12 at 15:35
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up vote 1 down vote

Against the Philidor you might experiment with a line I developed myself (don't know how good it is), but if they surrender the center (i.e. exd4), then I develop a setup where I fianchetto the dark-squared bishop on b2, play f3 at some early point (with perhaps a later f4). I usually stick the other bishop on d3 then if they chop it with a knight I take back with the c-pawn, getting a better center than Black at the cost of bishop vs. knight. I usually can start up some sort of middlegame kingside pawn majority attack as a result of all this and create mate threats by Qe1-g3 along with the bishop at b2. It seems to work fairly well but I'm sure some IM/GM could refute the whole thing. Not like we regularly play against those guys though. :)

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