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In chess, Hypermodernism or the Hypermodern School of Thought is a strategy of play which controls the center of the board with distant pieces rather than with pawns, inviting the opponent to occupy the center with pawns which can then become objects of attack.
One of its major proponents was Aaron Nimzowitsch. His book Mein System (My System) was largely a positional text, but introduced elements of Hypermodernism. Other leading members of the Hypermodern School were Richard Réti, Ksawery Tartakower, Gyula Breyer, and Alexander Alekhine though the last was more of a blend with the Classical School.
The main reason for the creation of this school was that several of the top players (Tartakower and Reti included) felt chess was becoming boring, slow and unworthwhile. They also believed that chess could not be simply defined by a set of laws or principles such as Wilhelm Steinitz or Siegbert Tarrasch would lay out. Hypermodern openings include the Réti Opening, King's-Queen's-Nimzo-Bogo-or-Old Indian Defences, the Catalan Opening, the King's Indian Attack, Alekhine's Defence and to a lesser degree the English Opening.
Openings such as 1...a6 do not constitute hypermodern openings since, although they delay the occupation of the centre with pawns, they also delay development which is not inline with Hypermodernism.
The "Hypermodern" school of chess theory came to prominence in the 1920's with practitioners such as Aaron Nimzowitsch, Richard Réti and Gyula Breyer, all central European masters. Their ideas were a challenge to the existing orthodoxy popularised by the German Siegbert Tarrasch which was a rather dogmatic distillation of the ideas worked out by the great chess pioneer Wilhelm Steinitz. Steinitz was the first player who in his praxis demonstrated a mastery of positional chess ideas stressing the value of "static" advantages (such as avoidance of pawn weaknesses, strong outposts for knights, striving for "good" rather than "bad" bishops in locked pawn positions) and the ideas he developed came to be known as the "Classical" or "Modern" school of thought which was in turn a reaction to the earlier swashbuckling style of Adolf Anderssen, Henry Blackburne and others who represented the "Romantic" school.
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