Chess grandmasters keep saying "The hippo opening is bad", why?!?

the hippo has for the most part been defanged and the best sources of counterplay agaisnt it are well understood . This isnt like the days spassky gave it a whirl and people didnt know enough to effectively punish.
now i must add a caveat. hippo is as bad as the formation your opponent can get way with. Hippo vs two pawn center is pretty respectable. vs 3 and 4 pawns, it really depends .
its simply not a reliable universal system vs strong human players. But i think it can be played effecitvely on occasion.

Hmm....

Please post games where the Hippo is outplayed. I used to think the Hippo is solid as it was played in the World Women's Chess Championship.

The opening post is bizarre. One half-joke "tier list" by one grandmaster somehow became "grandmasters keep saying" in the title.

First of all, just because Spassky ended up playing with the hippo formation doesn't mean he intended playing the hippo against anything. Double fianchettoes are rare enough in opening theory but now and again like in some English lines they are considered theory and you can get hippo positions in some theory. Candidates prepared immensely for their games, I doubt Spassky was going to use the hippo against everything.

The hippo is too slow. Usually for the finachettos the bishop exherts a powerful influence down the diagonal, in the hippo white has the centre completely and the bishops aren't really pointing anywhere. Same with the knights. It's like the Owen's defence on steroids.

Meanwhile white has all the time in the world to gather his forces. If there's a pawn on e4 then Bc4 is a great position for the bishop, as any beginner will tell you. Against the Pirc this is not so easy or advantageous because of the fork trick and certain other knight manouvres, while if you play d4 c4 the pawn is in the way, it's good in some sicilians but in many black can hunt down and demolish the bishop. Meanwhile against the hippo you can do it no problem. If white has to make some small "concession" to traditional principles like playing f4, g4, h4 or maybe even a pawn sacrifice to open up the defence somewhat, that's fine - he should have so much control that he gets away with it easily and from then on black is in big trouble.

What you're really hoping for as black if you play the hippo is that white is going to make some sort of mistake, overlook some knight move or something, forget about a move and suddenly - huge embarrassment getting beaten by the hippo. And you just sit back and wait for such a mistake playing the same moves every game. This is unlikely to be good for chess development. So while the hippo is no joke in the hands of a skilled practitioner it's also not such a great thing to use, you're probably just hoping for a slip-up, so that is probably a further reason why the streamers don't like it.

Who is baiter?

Baited?

If you are a 2500+ OTB rating then you should not play it. But I totally agree the hippo is a very underrated opening. Although, the reason why everyone dislikes the opening so much is because stockfish 16 on high def gives white 0.9, an almost winning position. But nobody memorizes hippo theory because no one plays it so I don't think it really matters. Overall, I think everyone should give the hippo system a try it's a pretty simple set-up opening with little to no theory.

Hippo was good enough to play twice in a World Championship Match:
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1106728

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1106734

That version of the Hippo is totally fine. The game started as a modern defence. Black only committed to playing a hippo after white had blocked both his f and c pawns AND weakened himself with a4. If white did something else, black would just play the modern defence.

But if black tried to play the Hippo against everything, he would just get absolutely steamrolled by the Austrian Attack setup (pawns on d4+e4+f4).

That is why the only serious way to use the hippo is to start out with either ...g6 (followed by ...Bg7 and ...d6) or ...b6 (followed by ...Bb7 and ...e6), then if the opponent does something scary like put a pawn on f4, you bail out and play a Modern or Owens defence, but if he only grabs the two-pawn centre then you can try the Hippo.

I didn't even know the Hippo existed until I played white against my dad, who used it (he's ~1900 elo, I got murdered). Since then, I use it exclusively as Black, and have quickly found some definite benefits and drawbacks.

The point of the hippo is purely defensive, mainly so that your opponent leaves you alone until you can find a hole in their position and set up an attack. Because of this, it's relatively easy for White to play a fast-developing opening to exploit some of the weak pawns in Black's structure. The London System is often paired with the Hippo for this reason.

As to your question, I agree with @cR1NN that the engines' reasoning breaks down when faced with more closed positions. I have been systematically playing a bunch of different bots on this site as Black, testing out the Hippo against them, and have noticed the computer making questionable moves like giving up their castling rights for no reason, simply because they don't know what to do.

In conclusion, I don't think the Hippo is a "bad" opening per se, but it is certainly an offbeat one, and to be played with caution. Even if your early objective is to just complete the 10-move setup, you still need to know which parts of the Hippo to assemble in response to which of White's moves. Tread carefully.

@NohJay the london is probably one of the best outcomes for the hippo player, as it doesn't actually challenge black.

If you want a fast game to capitalize on black you must take the center with multiple pawns.

Dangerous club lines for white will usually have d4, e4, and f4. These lines usually result in f5 pawn sacrifices and highly questionable positions for both sides. Some lines may replace f4 with c4. At higher levels, you'll see less of that and more c4s, or simply just d4-e4, but those require more technical skill and precision, because people learned to deal with those f4 pushes.

I'd also have to contest your point that the hippo is defensive!

I don't think a defensive mindset is proper for playing the hippo. The opening is inherently seeking imbalances rather than stability. You try to pull the opponent into being overaggressive and punishing them. Unfortunately because hypermodern chess isn't as popular in low levels people don't play them properly and games can frequently end up very passive for the hippo player.

In games like the one below, the hypermodern player usually looks like he had no counterplay, when often that isn't true, and they simply missed their chances to play for an advantage.

Maybe ill explain my idea of the hippo since almost all replays here show hippo theory that i dont understand.

if

then

if

then

if/then

this sets up:

if knights/then:

ex:

this blocks bishop and knights going to b5/g5

then if a4/h4, this

All the replays in this thread have the hippo player pawnbreaking instead of closing the position

another example:

In simple Hikaru trolled the human with the Bongcloud Attack which is rather game over against strong bots and Hikaru trolled the bot with "the hippo opening" which is not very effective against strong humans.