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The one with 'Bughouse per e-mail' should instead be called 'Synchronous Bughouse', since this is game that can also be played without mail or email, but is also the way to play the Synchronous Bughouse game over the slow communication channel by two players only.
Since I have experience programming both double move variants and Crazyhouse type games, I may be the only one who knows just what to do. I'll get around to it after I finish some other games.
Any volunteers to create Game Courier preset for 2-player bughouse, like described in 'Bughouse per e-mail' section? Looks like a fun game!
Here are some Bughouse variants by me: 1. Some possible turn variants (they can be played by 4 or 2 players, and it's possible to play these with GC): a. In each turn, player must move one piece on both boards (in any order), possible to make one or two drops. b. Player must chose one of boards to move or drop piece on it. c. Turn order: p1 moves/drops on b1, p2 moves/drops on b1, p2 moves/drops on b2, p1 moves/drops on b2, p1 moves/drops on b1... Turn variants, of course, have no advantage that original bughouse have: it can be solved. But even normal chess was not solved yet, and these will not be solved soon (if someone will try to solve them, of course). 2. Kings can be captured and dropped (it's still not allowed to castle trough check). Team loses when it have no kings (when it have king(s) in reserve only it also loses). 3. You gives captured pieces to opponent's teammate! In this game, there is no material advantage. Perhaps, it's better (for balance) to move black on one of boards first. 4. This variant was probably already invented before me as one of these many regional variants: pieces can be dropped only to starting squares of pieces of same kind. 5. Bughouse, combined with it's own 2-players variant Crazyhouse: after each capture, player must chose to give captured piece to teammate or leave for himself (probably, it's better to play it with shogi-like set). 6. And most unusual variant: Bughouse, combined with Alice chess! When piece moves, it appears on another board without changing sides (see Alice chess rules for details)! Of course, it's better to play this according to one of turn variants above, but it's possible to play with normal bughouse rules to: piece appears when move on corresponding board is finished, if square is occuppied, piece on that square gets captured (it's possible to capture king, and it's team loses). In Russia this variant is commonly known as Swedish chess (i don't know why, maybe, it was brought to USSR by Swedish players). Naming is, of course, not important, with one expection: i don't like name 'Siamese chess'! Siamese chess is Makruk (Makruk, of course, also can be played in Bughouse style, as almost any other chess or checkers-like game)! And who is inventor of Bughouse? Looks like, it's inventor is unknown. Interesting, did he knew about shogi when invented this?
In my high school chess club back in the 1970s we used to play this with multiples of 4 players--up to 16 players. You pass pieces to your right and the player on the right end throws them to the player on the left end. It's a great game for a whole chess team to play one fast exciting game.
Dont miss BICS where You can play bughouse chess and crazyhouse also as fiser random.
See free Bughouse chess internet server project
The 'Bughouse Chess' book is now in print and copies can be ordered via amazon.de and bookstores. For more details see http://www.bughouse-book.com !
This site unfortunately is getting out of date, it for example still links to my old d2d4.de page which doesn't exist anymore for years now. I have mailed months ago about this.
The Bughouse Book (www.bughouse-book.com) can be preordered untill December 8th 2006. On that page you can also download a 40+ pages preview of the book.
There are many regional rules in this game. In our part of Germany and in Poland there is an interesting rule considering pawn promotion (called 'Grabschen', roughly translated taking away: If a pawn reaches the last line, the enemy team gets it, but the player owning the pawn promotes it by taking a figure of the partners enemy board. This leads to many tactical possibilties, like taking an checkmating figure (or the one that covers it) away. Besides that, we play our 'Tandem' without checkmating by dropping a figure, but with checking, and the first win ends the round.
DoubleChessBoard multiplayer software
alows You training blitz and bughouse chess with/against 1 - 4 winboard engines on single PC or with friends using network game. Support also bronstein time control and alternative starting positions.
I hope You will enjoy also true realtime decision now :)
Freeware download of this chess mini server :
http://bughousechess.wz.cz/DoubleChessBoard
we play htis game at lunch at my school every day. during exam week when we had a 2 hour lunch break we got 9 boards going at once. i t was crazy. the boards in the middle had more pieces available to drop than could fit on the board!! also, our rules of ending are different. you play to when the king is taken. then if your king is taken in bughouse our partner has 3 moves to mate his oponent to make it a draw not a loss. and in 3, 5, 7, 9 board etc game, when a king is captured i is passed to the middle so that if one of your partners gets maited, he can use the turn that he owuld normally have right before being taken to dtop another kind somewhere else. (those king dropping rulaes are very lax as someone once dropped their extra king to mate their opponent!!)
About pawn dropping: we have the rule that a pawn CAN drop in the first rank if agreed at start, and the fixed rule that a pawn can NOT drop on the 6th, 7th or 8th ranks. And only 'original' pawns have the 2-ranks starting movement.
<p>Besides that, we also used to play four or six boards in a row. White pieces are always at the left, and pieces always move rightwards. Pieces from the last-right board used to be thrown to the first board causing curious jokes, for example about Queens' underwear while it's flying.
<p>About kings, we used to end all boards when first king is checkmated.
I've played a bughouse-type game with 3 boards. The students who started
playing it in the lobby of my dorm started out with about 4 or 5 people
playing bughouse. This attracted attention and drew more people from the
dorm in the next few days. Once there were at least 6 people, another
board was brought out and they started playing 'crackhouse' (it was
addicting like crack). The central board was the board for the more
advanced player, and winning on this board would win the game for that
team. The other way a team could win is if the 2 side boards are won for
a certain team. The time limits were different for the central board than
they were for the side boards. The central board was given less time, I
think. But this would mean that timers were unnecessary for the side
boards. I don't remember exactly how timing worked. Captured pieces
from the sides moved towards the center, and captured pieces from the
center went to either side depending on which player the central player
decided needed the piece more. Kings were capturable (a captured king on
the central board would end the game), and when a captured side king moved
to the central board, the king in hand could negate a piece in hand from
the opponent in the central board. Both pieces were removed from the
game. This rule could be changed to something like 'king in hand can
remove an opponent's piece on the board (except king), but not while in
check'. The king in hand rules were not set in stone. It got pretty
crazy. I played this game instead of studying for finals last year.
Looking back, that was a bad decision.
<p>I have to credit Nick for this game. He said that he and some friends
invented it. If only I could remember his last name...
Bughouse has many regional rules, but most of the rules given on this page do correspond to the international and widely accepted ones. For tournaments you need to be a little more precise about the handling of some potential problems, but here I would just add that : - I never heard about 'serious' bughouse played without a clock or at a time control exceeding 5 minutes per player and per move. - Verbal communication between partners is always unrestricted, and is the absolute spirit of the game. So you can advice (or flame) your partner. And I advice everybody to keep an eye on the publishing of Georg's book, which will probably be the definite saying about bughouse !
<p>Please take a look at <a href='http://www.bughouse-book.com'>bughouse-book.com</a>
<p>Imagine Anand,Leko, Kramnik and many of the other top chess players collaborating on one book ! Well that is what we did for bughouse chess - with many of the top internet (and European and US-gatherings) players contributing to create the first true bughouse book.
<p>Coming 2005 ...
I've been thinking of a variant expanding on the Bughouse concept that I call Team Chess (or Team Shogi). I'm envisioning six players on a team, and games taking place between two opposing teams. Two team members play a small variant, two play usual chess, and one plays a large variant; the sixth team member is the captain. All three chess variants being played should use similar armies and rules, so that it won't cause confusion if a piece gets transferred to another board -- perhaps Quickchess, usual chess, and Grand Chess. The winner of the large variant game determines the winning team. When a piece is captured, the capturing team's captain takes it in hand (it changes color) and delivers it to one of his team's five players (captain's choice) to drop at will. The captain can watch all five of the games, but no other communication takes place between the team members once play has begun. I haven't decided what should happen when one of the smaller games ends; should the captain receive all the pieces of the conquered army? None of them? Perhaps just a Prince (non-royal King)?
The way I play it, the player gets 1 minute for each move, if s/he exceeds that time limit, the opponet removes a pawn (or lowest value piece possible) and gives it to his partner. The player has now forfitted his move.
Click 'view all comments' at the bottom of this page to see a selection of more current and comprehensive links for bughouse pages on the net.
http://cashton.homeip.net/ubd/
3 first links at the top-right of this page (after 'See also:') are broken. The fourth one is very good, but still need to be updated to point directly to http://members.lycos.nl/bughouse/.
The way that I have always played Bughouse is that: A. Drops can only be done on your half of the board, B. No dropping as to check the king, C. First player to mate and his partner win. Rule A seems to take a little of the potency of drops away, but it's not that hard to move to the other side of the board.
I have also heard of this variant of chess being called transfer chess.
I play on the freechess.org server, and I wanted to add your information is solid ecept bughouse.net and thebugboard.net are dead links as are the deepbug.html link for bdean., chess engine. I want to invite all the Las Vegas Nevada, March 20, to March 24 , 2003 at the Gold Spike Hotel 7th Floor, we are holding a bughouse gathering 24/7 on the top floor of the Downtown Hotel, rooms are just 22.00 per night it is older hotel but it serves us well and we have about 30 to 40 buggers from all over the world. log into www.freechess.org and register talk to sgs or zap about the gathering, or finger sgs for more information Nitemove rated about 1200 to 1300 on freechess.org cheers !!! ie in bughouse .... lol
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Bughouse is an excellent 4 player variant that can be played with a different number of players, or (as a Bughouse variant) even a greater number of boards & sets than just two, if desired. Fwiw, I've seen on internet chat sites talk that Bughouse is hard for engines, as there are two boards & sets + drops, multiplying the possibilites compared to standard chess. If ever one of the two boards has a player sitting (refusing to move), however, the computer may then have an advantage if playing against a human on the remaining board (provided that person doesn't already have a big advantage).
From the wiki entry on Bughouse: "A valuation system, first suggested by FICS-player Gnejs, often applied to bughouse is pawn=1, bishop=knight=rook=2 and queen=4."