How do you crush the Philidor Defense?

Well, I posted 3...Nf6. Here are a few examples of high rated players with 3...Nf6.

Good point. Thank you.

@ Anthony - I also like to study the games of players closer to my rating. The chess games look much closer my own, filled with lots of good attacking ideas and basic tactics that I still need to learn. 

Here's a game with Ng5 in the U10 girls division from the Chess Base database.

Imagine if a grandmaster said, as advice for winning chess games "just checkmate your opponent... it's really easy to do." Would it help you? Maybe not, because perhaps it's not as easy for you.

If you think it's easy then you wouldn't mind a challenge? See if you can beat me when I play the Philidor.

P.S. Musikamole, there's no way those girls are rated 1500, maybe more like 400.

I am trying to find a good response when someone plays the Philidor as White. I play an opponent who always plays the philidor as Black but as White he plays the Ponziani, playing c3 to try to get in an early d4. But when I respond with 3. ...d5 he plays 4. d3 turning it into a Philidor.

Well yeah, and I'm just pointing out how uninformative that phrase is.

Forget about openings if you want to improve your low level. They don't matter at all. Yes there are some opening traps, but you can avoid all of them if you follow basic opening principles and castle quickly. Many games of this level are won simply becouse the king is in center and hanging free stuff. Focus on king safety and don't move your pawns in front of your king. And you will be 400 hundreds points higher just by following this rule and capture all free pieces and pawns the opponent will offer you. Practice and focus on tactics only. I did only this and was 1500 rated in no time. I am 1900 now and still i don't know well openings. Many lower rated players have better position out of opening but they still lose to me, ofcourse i lost many games, but openings is something you can quickly learn.  Study endgame and mostly tactics!

If you still have fun taking some advantage out of opening and prove some point then memorize the lines. But you will still lose games by better tactic player. I have won  games against 700-1100 rated players by moving my king left and right in beginning or blindfold play. Here i played blindfolded vs some 999 rated guy who played automatic with memorized opening (hippo defense) and here what happened. He did castle quickly but was unable to defend himself becouse lack of knowledge not opening, but in general. He could have played Qe7 on move 12 , but he hang his rook. He saw that move later and quickly moved it again attacking my knight, but he forgets about h7... 

I like these lines against black.

I honestly don't know what I was saying at the time of posting about a year ago. I guess a little bit of hubris was catching up to me as I was breaking a couple of rating barriers. Sorry about that. Listen to some of acemove's advice - it will be particularly helpful. 

How do you crush the Philidor?

About the same way you might try to crush a concrete block...with your teeth perhaps?

There is no bust to the Philidor.  It's passive compared to 2...Nc6 or 2...Nf6, and White can get a small but steady advantage if he plays it correctly, hence its lack of popularity at the GM Level, but you ain't crushing it!  You try to stir up some quick attack and it will blow up in your face!

Traps?  If the only way you know how to win at chess is via quick attacks and traps, you should take up another, simpler, game.  Might I suggest Tic Tac Toe?

An old thread, but @kaspforeva, if white insists on playing an 'Inverted Hanham', there's not a whole lot Black can do about it aside from equalizing.

The main problem with these lines is that you will never get to play them against the Philidor players who know what they are doing. Those typically hang on to e5 for dear life.

I think traps are very useful in one's opening repertoire.  For instance I play the Modern Steinitz (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 d6) against the Spanish, and once every 25 games or so, my opponent falls for the Noah's Ark Trap (5.d4 b5 6.Bb3 Nxd4 7.Nxd4 exd4 8.Qxd4? c5 9.Qd5 Be6 10.Qc6 Bd7 11.Qd5 c4).  I'm all for free points with no time off my clock after 11 moves.  However I also know what to do against 8th move and 5th move alternatives by White that don't rely on this trap.  However I do also have other less well known traps up my sleeve in other variations of the move, but as Black and White, but nothing that endangers my position.

Since recently I'm a big fan of Antoshin Variation! It's a nice way to stop White from doing a terrible tactics from the very beginning and, then, it is still possible to attack for Black (mainly by the pawnstorm on the queenside).

You can't really hang on to e5 cause you will get stomped in an equalish ending. After dxe5 dxe5 Qxd8+ Kxd8 I think white has a slight edge, very valuable if you know what you are doing.