Fast and Furious: Crushing the Philidor

Blunting an old weapon

The starting tabiya of the Philidor has been reached after 1.e4 e5 2.♘f3 d6 3.d4 exd4 4.♘xd4 ♞f6 5.♘c3 ♝e7, leaving White with a very big choice of various developing schemes. In a recently played game I opted for the setup with 6.g3 and after some opening adventures I managed to outplay my opponent in the long run with the aid of the bishop pair. More ambitious is 6.♗f4, which I obviously knew about, but wasn't ready to play. After my game I had a look at the sharp consequences of this move and consider it to be the refutation of the Philidor.

In this one hour all the critical lines are covered and make you well-prepared to crush this offbeat opening line.

The live show is free to watch and available on-demand for ChessBase Premium accounts.

Know the Terrain Vol. 5: The Philidor Structure

The Philidor structure (White pawns on d4 and e4, Black pawns on d6 and e5), is a fundamental position in the open games. In his new training course, IM Sam Collins shows you just how much explosive power is packed into this apparently simple structure.

Warming-up: White to play!

Move the pieces on the live diagram — solution below!

This week's show

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The Philidor Defence

The modern form of the Philidor Defence arises via the move order 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 e5. Then after 4.Nf3 Nbd7, Shirov has introduced the pawn sacrifice 5.g4!? into practice — and achieved excellent results with it.

Robert is live every other Thursday at 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET / 13:00 EST)

Watch previous shows

Extreme Calculation Training

Special attention will be paid to Intermediate Moves, Quiet Moves, Sacrifices on Empty Squares, Mating Patterns, Ignoring Opponents Threat, Calculation in Defence and Method of Comparison. Plus 50 interactive examples to test your knowledge.

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Solution to today's problem

Links

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