The Hippopotamus Defense

Geetimus

Jun 7, 2022, 11:08 AM | 0

Your first moves in chess are one of the most crucial. These moves decide how the rest of the games plays out. This means that you need to have a strong opening. There are many famous openings like the Sicilian defense, Ruy Lopez, Queen's Gambit, etc. The Sicilian defense has an incredible success rate, the Ruy Lopez destroys the opponent's pawn structure, and the Queen's Gambit take control of the center of the board. The center is the most important place on the board.

What about the lesser-known openings? Some less popular openings can be very deadly if you don't know how to counter them. One of these less-known openings is the Hippopotamus Defense. The Hippopotamus Defense behaves like a hippo, waiting under the water until the right time. Black has to wait until they move most of their pawns to the third rank and most of their pieces to the second rank. This lets Black set up a defense such that Black can flexibly adapt to whatever White throws at them. This opening really got popular after Boris Spassky used this opening in the 1966 World Championship against Tigran Petrosian.

The game above was the 1966 World Championship Game. Because Black (Spassky) had that defense, White (Petrosian) tried to attack many times, but got countered. This lead Black and WHite to tie. If Black had not played the Hippopotamus Defense, White would have won the game by a landslide. Grand Master Tiger Persson shared his opinion about this opening, "The Hippo lies low in the water. It looks almost ridiculously passive and many theoreticians consider the Hippo to be a peaceful, almost meek animal. But nothing could be further from the truth. On closer scrutiny the animal, the position, and the statistics look almost entirely different. The Hippo is a fierce animal; ready to crush anyone who gets too close."

The Hippopotamus Defense

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