Hippopotamus played Beethoven’s Triple Concerto

Ludwig van Beethoven's Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano in C Major, Op. 56, more commonly known as the Triple Concerto, was composed in 1803 and later published in 1804 under Breitkopf & Hartel. The choice of the three solo instruments effectively makes this a concerto for piano trio and the only concerto Beethoven ever wrote for more than one solo instrument. A typical performance takes approximately thirty-seven minutes.

In the game below I played the Hippopotamus Defence against a player and a friend bearing the name of this famous classical tune. In our game, I exchanged my queen with Triple's three minor pieces while gaining positional advantage. The game was easy to play because Triple was not paying too much attention in the game as he was busy playing with his toddler. You may listen to the Beethoven - Triple Concert Barenboim by Yo-Yo Ma & Perlman while reading this blog and playing the games below.

The Hippopotamus Defence is a name for various irregular chess opening systems in which Black moves a number of his pawns to the third rank, often developing his pieces to the second rank, and does not move any of his pawns to the fourth rank in the opening.

Boris Spassky employed the same set-up, dubbed the "Hippopotamus" by commentators, in the 12th and 16th match games against World Champion Tigran Petrosian. Both games ended in draws. Spassky was likely inspired by the Slovak International Master Maximilian Ujtelky, who had been experimenting with similar openings for several years.

Ujtelky's game as Black against Spassky at Sochi 1964, in which he played the same setup Spassky later adopted against Petrosian, is given below. Ujtelky played even more provocatively in some other games, such as against the very strong Soviet International Master Rashid Nezhmetdinov in the same tournament and won. Please see these games below.

 

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Thank you Sollevy10, Tripelkonzert for this part interesting. Sollevy thank you for these historical reminders, music and chess!

Thanks Sollevy for this posting. A beautiful recording of the triple concerto, didn't even know there was a recording with Barenboim and Yo-Yo Ma. What a delight! I also had no clue that Spasski came up with this Nh6,g6,f6,Bg7,Nf7 structure though had seen it occasionally. As far as the game is concerned, I knew I was in trouble when I realized Sol would get three pieces for the Queen as I learned early in my chess playing career that three pieces for the queen are an awesome sign of excellency and two pieces the certain route to 0 points for the "Patzer". Rare exceptions exist at least if the queen holder has some other assets as here in my game against the dancer in shape of two advanced pawns...http://www.chess.com/echess/game.html?id=47173739.