Hippopotamus Defence

The Hippopotamus opening is a rarely played chess opening, which is mainly used by black. It is among the Closed games and owes its name to the particular constellation of characters that is vaguely reminiscent of a Hippo (Hippopotamus ).

History

The Hippopotamus opening took place worldwide attention when the future World Champion Boris Spassky 1966 World Championship fight against Tigran Petrosian in the twelfth and sixteenth Match game anwandte this structure ( the games ended after 39 or 49 moves in a draw ). In today's competitive chess at grandmaster level or even in the world rankings this structure is very rare. Spassky himself played the Hippopotamus building again in 1982 in a rapid chess match in Hamburg against the then World Champion Anatoly Karpov, Spassky lost in 29 moves. The batch was then broadcast on television.

Opening characteristics and name variants

Main characteristics of this system are the opening two fianchettierten runners and the restrained game on only three rows. Only after the full development of the characters is searched with farmer advances on the third row, the confrontation with the figures of the opponent. This system, due to its restrained structure to virtually any white (or black) sequence of moves to be played, and requires no sound theoretical knowledge about individual opening variations.

Another name of this opening is Feustel structure or Feustel- Hippopotamus - building, named after the FIDE champion Bernd Feustel, who himself played this system frequently and in his book " openings - beyond all theory " underwent a detailed consideration.