In a very recent game someone played the Hippo against me and I lost after overstretching a little. So I upped the stakes against him in the rematch and played the Elephant Gambit and won. The "Large African Mammal " is a game two can play at as far as I'm concerned.
Morality of the Hippo Defense
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Hippo is the only opening where there is total harmony of pieces. The knights perfectly control the center, the bishops too, the knights are not standing in the way of bisops, no piece stands in front of a pawn and hinders it from moving forward. And it's symmetrical, which is beautiful.
Morality of "getting a position that doesn't have any book moves"
i know this is an old post but whatever, the hippo is positional play at the start and then it starts exploding
I once had a Chess instructor who taught all his beginner and novice players Hippo because It was easy to remember, set up, and taught that aggressive is not always the way to go. He told us that the point of the opening, like you said, is to annoy the opponent. In this opening, he taught to lock up any attacks rather than countering them, forcing the opponent to do something irrational in your favor.
Yes, the point is to annoy and frustrate. But there are valid counters, like Jerry's.
If your opponent is annoyed at the prospect of having a possible 3 pawn center or any other development scheme he could possibly want then the opening isn't really doing anything that proper chess wouldn't do on it's own. It might be bringing out some weaknesses in their game earlier than usual but that's about it. If you play this it's usually for the purpose of just avoiding theory or getting into weird positions and hoping to outplay your opponent.
Or maybe you just really like bishops.
I like the Hedgehog better because you get an open or semi open c-file while your pieces are even more harmonious. You have thematic sacrifices against e4 (especially with knights on c5 and f6 and sacs a bishop or knight and white supports the e pawn with the f pawn) and d5 breaks. Despite having less space black typically doesn't want to exchange down as it'll illustrate weaknesses and reduce pressure on white's farther advanced pawns and black tends to be coordinated enough to not need exchanging down anyway.
I know many complain about "playing for draws" or trying to win on time etc. but I always saw it as a part of the game that must be accepted... but the hippo defense... it is evil! I would never play it, how could you ruin our beautiful game with such moves?? I am not saying it is unfair, in fact it is not a particularly good opening at high levels. I mean it is so dull, what sort of man could bastardise chess so? Is its sole purpose to annoy and frustrate? Is that why these people play chess???