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Comment by mindgam3 | Hacker News Reader

Chess master and bullet addict here. It sounds like you're as into avoiding book lines as I am. May I recommend my secret opening weapon: the Hippopotamus. It is quite possibly one opening to rule them all:

- play it with both sides

- guaranteed to get people out of book

- successfully deployed to defeat none other than super GM Etienne Bacrot (in blitz, but still): http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1479768

[edit] it's not a particularly sharp/aggressive opening. Tends to be more slow positional grinds. But not always - there are lots of possibilities for breaking things wide open with center pawn breaks.

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That opening is amazing! I’ve never seen it before. Super aggressive and very aesthetic!

Yes on the aesthetics. More of a counterpuncher choice than overtly aggressive IMO. Usually lines don’t open up until move 10-20.

As an aside, cool to meet the person behind ironworker. I used your service many years ago to launch my first startup. Helped me with some cron job shenanigans that otherwise would have caused me a lot of grief. Nice work!

Why didn’y Bacrot just play 31. Bg7!! And win the game?

That's discussed in the game comments.

I don't understand.

Below the game record are some comments. One of them asks "why not 31. Bg7?" and some discussion ensues. One commenter points out a line beginning with 31. ... Ke7 and ending up with W gaining the exchange but B having several extra (passed) pawns. (I haven't attempted to verify the accuracy of any of these comments.)

How did you become a chess master? Can you tell me more of this hippopotamus?

This is going to sound really egotistical, but honestly I don’t remember much about becoming a master as I was 10 at the time. What I do remember is playing a shitload of games, rated games most weekends. And analyzing my losses with a soviet chess coach to identify and work on my blind spots. Rinse and repeat. Playing experience way more valuable than book learning.

I’ve been working on some training software and will hopefully be releasing a beta version on HN this summer, pending wrangling a bit of funding and/or a few devs willing to work for equity/glory.

I recommend checking out the mighty hippo’s Wikipedia page for some decent commentary and sample games.

It doesn't sound egotistical. It just seems like you had good parents and you put in a lot of hard work around a difficult subject and it paid off.

I wish I had put in more time as a kid for chess and that there was more STEM materials for computing and robotics. The 90's was a wasteland between the time of the BBC Micro/Commodore era and what we now have today with the Raspberry Pi and the maker movement. Windows 95 just wasn't very good for a kid with no idea where to start.

Is chess training software not a saturated market? I'm not super familiar with this to be honest.

Haha, no, like most scholastic chess champions I had a super dysfunctional home environment. One parent definitely supported/pushed my chess, and I give credit there where it’s due, but I could only apply the label “good” to either of my parents with some major qualifiers.

Never too late to start training! Neuroplasticity is a thing.

Chess training software is super not saturated. The dominant program, ChessBase, basically hasn’t changed in 20 years. Still no Mac version or decent web version if I’m not mistaken.

There’s a lot of cool things happening in live play and steaming right now with LiChess, which is phenomenal, and chess.com is starting to up its game as well.

But serious training software is stuck in the 90s, hence opportunity. Not that there’s any money in chess, but that’s another topic.

Well I hope everything is going well for you now in life! I didn't mean to imply your past was ideal and am sorry if it came out that way.

Thanks for the background on chess training programs. I had a friend with Houdini or some other engine maybe 10 years ago and it had a pretty extensive training mode or so I thought. It was fully 3D and could explain every move and suggest better ones...etc. Houdini is pretty expensive iirc (edit: just looked it up and it is ~$100 range), so maybe something more reasonable would satisfy a need? Also, I suppose the training mode was not as fully featured as real training software? I can't tell if this is the same "chessbase" thing you're talking about.

I’m up for helping, I have a load of ideas in this area...

Awesome! I just emailed you.

Is that not simply hypermodern school with the fianchettoed bishops?

Yes, it’s like the ultimate expression of hypermodern.

Other pro tip: if you do the full hippo with all the fixings (double fianchetto, pawns e6 d6 h6 a6) it also allows you to delay castling until you know which side your opponent commits to. This can lead to an awesome attack that comes out of nowhere and completely blindsides the hippo-unaware.

For clarity, is the attack you're referencing a castle to the opposite side of the opponent and then using your two rooks on the opponents side to push down the pawns?

Kind of. Waiting to commit works both ways:

1. If they castle one side, you can do the other and then launch an attack, usually it’s the pawns that clear the way and open lines, then rooks and minor pieces can get in the action. (As opposed to using rooks to push down pawns, if I’m reading your comment correctly)

2. You can also see if they are preparing an attack on one side, usually watching pawn structure or where they’re putting rooks. And then you can castle on the opposite side to effectively neutralize the attack.

Note that it’s definitely possible to launch an attack on the side you are castled on, especially if the center has a closed pawn structure - it’s just more risky and thus less common.

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