Irregular openings

You created a clear passed queen pawn, I would say you took care of it pretty well. Your long dark square diagonal was a bit dodgy though, lol. 

I often run into the same problem with the Hippopotamus defence. I am oft beaten by players who employ this, and it annoys me every time. It is a cheap trick, like the scholar's mate, but it does not have nearly as easy a refutation.

nice...

Thanks, spaghettio, that was what I tried to do but I wasn't sure if it was the right thing in that position.

Although it is not irregular, it is not often played at my level. I appreciate the input, for I will now study up a bit about the KIA.

What some people means by irregular opening?

Some talk about ECO A00 group of openings and other include irregular lines within quite more regular major openings.

In general for any unusual situation where you consider the situation as irregular or unfamiliar just follow the general strategy (The Roles)of opening.

I noticed that most of articles including those in Wikipedia that talk about irregular opening are lacking practical aspects toward this topic.

1- they discus variants among them with no read database and of course you will never come cross in your life.

2-they dont talk about transpositions to another major lines which is the very usual outcome for these games. and surprisingly most of the the explorers in databases ignore some of these transportations and continue descriping the game as original irregular A00 group.

3- If black responded with central line initial first move such as 1...e5 1...d5 1...Nf6 1...c5 and keep watching the white second move. if white reply with second central move such 2.e4  2.d4  2.c4 2.Nf3 the game will be transpose to king or queen pawn game or English or Reti and even Sicilian.

3- The black second move if not central (another irregular move) that make it really irregular game but transportation still can occur among irregular variations.

If you try to follow these simple 2 moves variations you will find a huge list of major openings inside irregular A00 line and is still underestimated by articles and computer databases..

Has TheDev1 been here since 2015? Anyway, most of the time, one faces a position with no knowledge of a specific move indicated in a book. One has to accept that as part of chess, and think of opening knowledge as a sometimes helpful aid. After a game, it makes sense to try to look up the moves in a book and see if it has some indication of how one might have played better in the opening. Many opening books are part explanation and part reference material. The reference material is included in the text with the idea that one mostly skips it on a first reading, and looks at an individual item when it applies to a game that one has just played.
"... Review each of your games, identifying opening (and other) mistakes with the goal of not repeatedly making the same mistake. ... It is especially critical not to continually fall into opening traps – or even lines that result in difficult positions ..." - NM Dan Heisman (2007)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140627062646/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman81.pdf

He has. I'm also not really interested in irregular openings like I was 4 years ago. I don't know that my chess skills are much better, but at least now I realize that the opening you play is a small fraction of what determines a game.

"... In the middlegame and especially the endgame you can get a long way through relying on general principles and the calculation of variations; in the opening you can go very wrong very quickly if you don't know what ideas have worked and what haven't in the past. It has taken hundreds of years of trial and error by great minds like Alekhine and, in our day, Kasparov to reach our current knowledge of the openings. ..." - GM Neil McDonald (2001)

GM McDonald was not writing for GMs.

Is avoiding usual theory the same as avoiding theory? Is it fairly common for people to get into trouble after the Blackmar-Diemer, 1 g4, the Halloween Gambit, etc. ?

Does that necessarily mean that a little more knowledge won't help?

forum is kind of dead but I would like to mention that chess.com now has a lesson under 'key openings' that tells you how to play against or with irregular openings. I've seen people saying that memorizing openings isn't the best thing to do but the lesson also teaches you why you need to do what you do.