Hippopotamus Defence

Hhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Boring bad opening

im back in the fence once again lol so this line looks almost acceptable to me. if white goes for the plan i mentioned earlier and delays castling.

the game Xu-Kamsky 2018 follows this idea but from a differing move order. That game was a draw. if white goes for early 0-0-0 instead, black has the practical pawn sacrifice b5!? and since the knight is on f6 instead of e7, white must take the pawn with the c pawn, in which case a6 follows with a benko-like idea . game proceeds as 7 pawns vs 8 but whites queenside is eyed by two open files. Engine only gives white a minor advantage.

Personally I find openings with 30 moves of theory boring. They might look super-sharp and exciting, but the players are just trotting out engine lines from memory. The Hippo barely has any theory after the first 10 moves. And very rarely have I seen a boring Hippo game, except when things get locked up, which doesn't happen very often, at least at my level.

If you fail to reach the Hippo formation, it is because you failed to develop correctly, and failures do not deserve titles.

Semi-Hippo + Failed Hippo

playing the full hippo agaisnt the right pawn formation is a failed hippo according to the eval bar. and when your average eval is already 0.9-1.1, you need every centipawn you can get

Play chess however you want. But if it's not a Hippo then it's not a Hippo. De Santis was wrong to suggest that everything is a semi-Hippo. He's just an FM who published a book. He's not God.

Hi to all ,im fully educated theoretican into modern defence ,g6-Bg7 are the most comon mives there ,then depend if you go for d6 or c5 instead then can be manny other hypermodern oppenings and I must say it is far away from bad ,Colin McNab,Zurab Azimprashvili and Raymonde Kean are players who had it in their repertoire under eco code B(06) also know as Robatsch ,they usually play it kind of solid with c6 involved ...that what someone mentioned Ivkov and Spassky played it just a few games classical ,more used in blitz.Why?! Because any of hypernodern defences in this case a Modern defence Robatsch or even Pterodactyl or Eastern Benoni etc..are verry hard to handle ,and those games are most of time fully of mistakes on high level too ,need so much chess knowledge ,deep long term strategy understabding ,so much calculations almost imposible to be sure what to move in sea of continuations ..so a 'famous gm's" dont play it because of that ,so much energy need to put into just one game ,going directly into cosmic expedition into unlimited chess void.For them is simply solid boring deep analysed oppenings is just ok to drawish or play well know endgame .Do not understimate any of Modern defences because there are so manny resources!!!

The moves are e4 Nh6

Hi Profesore Crazy. When I saw you were from the 'Solomon' Islands I thought you might be the 'The 7ft Hippo Jedi' - Solomon Ruddell trying to spice up the Hippo thread! 🤣 I always play b3 to get my Hippo with white and b6 with black, but most folks start with g6 (the Modern), so having a bonafide Modern Defence guru commenting on this thread would be great! I might give the Modern a whirl to see if my results improve! 👍

I'm actually from Scotland too, like Colin McNabb!

In fact i'm going to change my flag from the Union Jack to Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

I am actualy from Serbia but I dont want to be revealed and enjoy in my shadow

Any question send me pm i can give a tons of lessons about modern just from head and answer on any question i can make a live and answering

The first time I read about the Hippo was in Tiger Hillarp Persson's brilliant 'Tiger's Modern' book. It had a whole chapter! I've never started the Hippo with g6 because of the Austrian Attack.

Yes ,Austrian Attack can be unpleasant but it is nothing special at all

If Pirc and King's Indian players can deal with it, the Hippo can too. But it does disturb the Hippo structure a bit more than anything that happens starting with the Owen defence.

It's not the Modern Defense or the Robatsch anymore. It's called the Semi-Hippo now.

Yeah I know i talk in general g6 Bg7 etc... :thumbs:

Keene did a review of the De Santis book in British Chess Magazine (July 2022), and it was reprinted online by ChessBase: "Behold now behemoth!" (22 August 2022).

( chess.com removed my link en.chessbase.com / post / behold-now-behemoth )

Keene wrote "According to Bill Cash’s invaluable online information about the origins of the Hippo", but I searched for a long time and was unable to find any such resource. Does anybody know what Keene was talking about and have a link?

Thanks for mentioning that article. I found it by Googling 'Behold now behemoth hippo chess'

Not sure who Bill Cash is. Hopefully someone on here knows where that invaluable Hippo resource is!