Abstract
We lay down the groundwork for the treatment of almost hyperdefinable groups: notions from [5] are put into a natural hierarchy, and new notions, essential to the study to such groups, fit elegantly into this hierarchy. We show that "classical" properties of definable and hyperdefinable groups in simple theories can be generalised to this context. In particular, we prove the existence of stabilisers of Lascar strong types and of the connected and locally connected components of subgroups, and that in a simple one-based theory an almost hyperdefinable group is bounded-by-abelian-by-bounded.