Hippopotamus Defence

Nice

Can anyone rated 1800+ or with a title explain how the game would typically play out if both White and Black use the Hippo setup?

Play for c4/c5 and/or f4/f5 depending on the color you choose to play

Can't be done. Try it yourself, to set up a Hippo on both sides of the board and you'll see.

I do know how to counter the Hippo defence

Will you show us how?

But I defeated tal bot using hippo opening .

💀 what is this

What is hippo?

I agree

the hippo opening is bad

you need to specify what your opponent has played to rate the hippo Its usually if ok if white plays a two pawn center slightly dubious againsth the c-d-e 3 pawn center and outright dubious vs the d-e-f 3 pawn center. Also black should know when to slightly diverge from the textbook line up.

it has never been considered a fully reliable defense but its a tough nut to crack and the positions have a lot of latent counterattacking chances

This book is about the Hippopotamus defense!

 :(

I have seen that a lot, I never knew it was a legitimate defense. I always just called it "The Fruit Cellar" because thats where black seems to be hiding. I have come to grief on it, at times, by becoming over extended. I would be on the verge of breaking through to black's king, then suddenly everything went sideways, and my king would have to go into bitter exile to a cramped Paris apartment.

The Hippo is a lot of fun and improved my middle game resourcefulness… BUT (regrettably) it cannot be played against anything. In particular, if White adopts a classical set up as he would against the King’s Indian defense, locks the center with d5, and then breaks on the queenside after due preparation with c5, the Hippo structure falls apart as Black’s Queenside fianchetto just creates weak squares and targets for White Queenside pawn advance. For this reason, I strongly suggest Hippo def players to learn the Modern, incl the Neo-Modern defense, so they can vary away from the Hippo double fianchetto formation when need be.

Keith Allen from Ulster (he plays in the Isle of Man now) played the hippo against me. yeah we lost interest and called it a draw when the middlegame started.

my copy of De santis hippo book arrived today and im already impressed. The author has a gift for explaining the proper ideas to keep in mind vs different white formations. which is exactly how to approach a defense like this one!

Chapter 5 in "Tiger's Modern" (chapter 6 in "Modern Tiger") is another good resource for the Hippo. Hippo is a valid defense and I think we are going to be seeing more of it for a long time to come.