Editing Philidor Defence (section)

==History==
In his 1561 book, [[Ruy López de Segura|Ruy Lopez]], seeking to debunk [[Pedro Damiano]], advocated 2...d6 as superior to 2...Nc6, on the grounds that 2...Nc6 allows the strong move 3.Bb5, now known as the [[Ruy Lopez]] or Spanish Opening. Philidor evidently concurred with this assessment, though he also considered 2.Nf3 inferior to 2.Bc4. Philidor advocated the risky continuation 3.d4 f5!? The Philidor Defence subsequently became a popular opening, though 2...Nc6 remained the most common reply.

The Philidor occurred in one of the most famous games ever played, [[Morphy versus the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard|"The Opera Game"]] played in 1858 between the American [[chess master]] [[Paul Morphy]] and two strong amateurs, the German noble [[Charles II, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg|Duke Karl of Brunswick]] and the French aristocrat Count Isouard. The game continued 3.d4 Bg4, a deviation from modern standard lines. The Philidor Defence declined in popularity as {{chessgloss|positional play}} became more developed, and it had almost completely vanished from top-tier chess by [[World War I]].

{{As of|2017}}, there are no top players who employ the Philidor with regularity, although [[Étienne Bacrot]] and [[Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu]] have occasionally experimented with it in classical play. Its popularity in master play has increased slightly, however, over the last 20 years. It has also become fairly popular in [[Rapid Chess|rapid]], [[Blitz chess|blitz]], and [[bullet chess]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessopening?eco=C41 |title=The Philidor |website=[[Chessgames.com]] }}</ref>