Hippopotamus Defence

Nice article. My favorite Keene quote is...

"The Hippopotamus Defence is just what players need who loathe memorising reams of opening theory."

Amen to that! 🙌

So everything is a Hippo unless it is a semi-Hippo.

Keene actually mentioned the Semi-Hippo! 🤣

I have unwittingly tried the Hippo myself, though de Santis would doubtless describe my efforts as a Semi-Hippopotamus.

Yay

I love it

It’s so good

I won a game with it

semi-hippo is not the name of an opening, its the name to a deviation of a planned hippo. 
but this is such a pointless thing to waste time on, the more concerning blunder, is to insist on playing a full hippo setup when it is clear some formations by white lead to a plain bad position by black. If your level of play is so low that even a prepared opponent wont be an issue, play the hippo, the latvian, grob and anything you can get away with to your hearts content, although if you seriously hope to improve you will eventually have to change as a matter of necessity. 
if you as an aspiring and improving player wish to keep playing the hippo well into your prime, you bet you are paying attention to when deviating into a semi-hippo is strongly recommended, pure hippo fanaticism be damned. There will be plenty of players who will wing it and play a natural formation agaisnt your hippo and you can flaunt your hippo purity there as you like, but to insist on a system when the engine is screaming 1.3-1.5 is just foolish

The only reason you see the rare pure hippo every once in a while at very high level even agaisnt critical replies as opposed to other dubious lines with such high evals is because the level of prep you need to get away with a hippo is relatively small. It is the most systemy of all system paneceas so people are more willing to wing it on an odd game. If you needed to be super booked just to do well at the best of times like with a latvian, you seriously start considering whether all this effort is worth the risk of someone who just knows the refutation and blow you off the board.

Well done! Hopefully you stick with it. I had tried dozens of openings before I started playing the Hippo, but now I doubt I will ever play anything else for the rest of my life, with white or black. My wife thinks i'm obsessed with it, and everybody buys me Hippo stuff for Xmas! 🤣

Here are some free resources on Youtube to get you started!

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/hippo-love

If you don't play the full Hippo you will never know it's potential. Players who abandon the Hippo are basically scared to try it.

De Santis certainly did not do us any favor when he declared that every failed Hippo is a semi-Hippo. This essentially says that while none of these variations are Hippos, they are all Hippos, and that anything that somewhat resembles a Hippo is a Hippo. There is no other opening in all of chess with such a meaningless definition.

According to what has been established in this forum, when someone mentions the Hippo, it means they are talking about any one of a couple of thousand possible variations.

Have you heard of the Tower of Babel?

You won't lose much.

De Santis probably should have said "this line transposes into the French" or "into the King's Indian", or "the Modern", rather than just call every Hippo transposition a 'Semi-Hippo'. That's how most other chess books deal with it. He could have used the expression 'Semi-Hippo' for lines that aren't transpositions into other established openings. Would be good to get in touch with De Santis and ask him to read this thread, considering he started it! 🤣

a lot of these semi-hippo dont transpose to anything but some weird hybrid of multiple defenses. Besides, even if a semi-hippo strongly resembles a specific defense, so long as its also not a system ,it tecnically isnt that.
you keep insisting on a robotic theory of nomenclature that is simply more burdensome than helpful. Semi-hippo is not a code in the ECO, the term is not confusing anyone reading his book.

I've read his book from start to finish and the nomenclature doesn't bother me at all. I'm just trying to understand where wormrose is coming from. To be honest at the level I am at now (1500-1600) I can get away with a full Hippo in practically every game. But I watch Robert Drury's games on Youtube and 2000+ players throw pawns at the Hippo in a scary aggressive way, so if I ever get to that level (which I doubt - i'm 50 years old 🤣) I would obviously be looking to counter their advance in the best way possible.

I've won 8 out of 9 games with more or less the Full Hippo setup. But i'm willing to take a few losses to see if I can get a higher rating in the long run by playing De Santis' 'Semi-Hippos', darkunorthodox88's 'Hyper-Hippo', and even the 'Pygmy-Hippo' setup Robert Drury was talking about last week.

I've been in my comfort zone with the full Hippo setup... but so has my rating! 😁

Where I am coming from is quite simple: What is a Hippo?

I have been running a club dedicated to the Hippo for 12 years, and I have experienced a tremendous amount of general confusion from new members due to the term "semi-Hippo".

To me, no other definition for Hippo than this makes any sense. Of course there will be variations, but nothing so bizarre ad the example I have seen in this forum.

You guys don't seem to understand that I don't care how you play chess. But I do care if you are spreading misinformation. But now it's obvious to me that the damage is done and is irreversible. Even Raymond Keene, (one of my chess heroes) has a different definition of the Hippo. How can we possibly have an intelligent discussion about chess when we don't have meaningful definitions?

So, I have decided to abandon my club and move on. These days, I'm far more interested in photography anyway.

I think you completely misunderstand how language actually works. We dont walk around with dictionary definition of 20k words and call it fluency, the vast majority of words we learn through family resemblance, not through necessary and sufficient conditions. Here is another curve ball, not only are new words created, but the public meaning of old words also changes and no semantic tragedy befalls us.

in the old days, any formation involving the defensive position of pawns and pieces on the third file was called the hippopatamus defense . in fact, the only move order chessmaster ( who had an intensive ECO catalog, thats how i learned so many variation names) only calls the hippo the following line 1.e4 nh6 2.d4 g6 3.c4 f6 lol. Now in modern times, the hippo refers to a systematic idea, where the "ideal" of said formation is the ten move formation with 6 of the pawns on the 6th, knights on e7 and d7 and bishops fianchettoed. But how far you fall from that idea and still remain a hippo is family resemblance. 
imagine you had all movements except the last pawn push a6 done, is that a hippo? how about if you recognize your opponent is playing a specific formation where going h6-g5 instead of h6-g6 is superior? is that not a hippo anymore? or how about this absurd case. You going for the pure hippo and your opponent plays bh6 hanging his own bishop for free, if black takes with nxh6 and not going to e7 anywhere, would you say your opponent stopped you from playing the hippo? dear lord, obviously not. but this is what results when you insist like this.

It's clear you don't know. Guess what, Ray Keene does know. The ChessMaster opening catalog did know. The Hippo as a name and as an opening was extensively discussed by Myers in The Myers Openings Bulletin (March 1981, number 14). "The Hippotamus" was a name given by John Crittenden Thompson to a setup he devised of ...g7-g6, ...f7-f6, and ...Ng8-h6-f7 (or the same with white). This is the same thing Keene and ChessMaster said. Calling the double-fianchetto with knights on e7 and d7 a "Hippo" was a misnomer pure and simple, as was calling all pawns the third rank a "Hippo". But c'est la vie, now Hippo is in common usage for at least the double-fianchetto. So we live with that. But please stop getting your knickers in a twist over other people spreading misinformation, as you call it, when in fact it is you who is short on information.

One thing can say for sure is that I'm glad I'm not as rude as you people. It is possible to use language to have an intelligent discussion about something without being rude and abusive.