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This is a bad game unless you are EXTREMELY good at bughouse. The people in the article are not good. They are newbies. (You can tell because they play 5 minut

This is a bad game unless you are EXTREMELY good at bughouse. The people in the article are not good. They are newbies. (You can tell because they play 5 minute bughouse and they play slowly. No good players play 5 minute bughouse because it's a waste of time. 2 minute is standard. If you play with more, you literally end up sitting around waiting for time to get low, for minutes, because that is often to the advantage of the team that is losing and is easy to force by either team most of the time.) Also based on their openings, which are utter crap in both bughouse and chess, they don't even know how to play basic chess either. The reason it's a terrible game is that bughouse is all about SPEED. You must move AS FAST AS POSSIBLE AT ALMOST ALL TIMES or you just plain lose because time leads allow controlling when pieces come to the other board which is extremely powerful. It's hard enough to make all your moves in .5 seconds on one board. If you're going back and forth between two boards, you have to literally be one of the best few bughouse players in the world -- with over 10,000 games of experience online -- or the quality of play is going to be terrible. I'm a strong chess player, a strong bughouse player, and have a great deal of experience, but I'm still not very good at playing two bughouse boards at once. It's very very very very hard. Doing one of the hardest things around -- trying to play lightning fast on two boards at once -- is not a very good idea for a break. To play halfway decent bughouse on just one board, you need an extremely large amount of practice so that you can defend all types of attacks by habit and intuition, because you need to stay safe in under .5 seconds a move at all times. Bughouse is all about pattern recognition as fast as possible. Chess skill and other stuff is important but secondary. Honestly, newer players can't even move fast enough in person without knocking over pieces. If you watch the game you'll see them sitting there thinking for several seconds about moves. If you try that against anyone competent, you simply automatically lose. That's how bughouse works. The solution for them, btw, may be bughouse without clocks: white moves on both boards simultaneously, then black moves on both boards simultaneously, and so on. I think that would be a good game, though a very different one than regular bughouse.

Isofarro 15y ago
This is not about being super-competitive at bughouse, it's about getting the mind in a working state to quickly go into the zone. Bughouse to the non-serious chess player is random enough to be zany and enjoyable whether you win or lose. It doesn't need to have a super-competitive streak to be useful as a tool for getting the mind up to speed. Spending a few minutes thinking about a concrete problem is sufficient. It's not all about winning at all costs. Its just a warm up exercise that gets the blood pumping.
- xenophanes 15y ago
  You don't understand. If they ever stop to think about how to play well, they will soon discover they can win by playing worse moves faster. Just a little basic strategy with the clocks will trump a lot of play skill on the board. The only way it can stay the way it is now is if they never think about it much. Which is dumb. Imagine candyland or monopoly was played with clocks and whoever moves faster won. That would be a terrible game for new players. And if they don't understand that the clocks matter, it's in a very precarious position: the moment one of them reads any strategy guide or thinks about it, their game will change itself against their wishes. They are playing with a ruleset that makes something the most important part of the game, then ignoring it in their actual play. The ruleset doesn't do what they want. It's the wrong ruleset for them. It's much easier to win on the clocks than learn chess. They are all easily smart enough to do it. It isn't very complicated and doesn't take long to learn. I don't think if they knew how completely broken there game was they would be advocating it to the internet. The internet has people who know how to play bughouse, the internet will destroy their ignorance which is the only thing keeping their game working. None of this has anything to do with being super-competitive. It's just the easy, lazy way to win: by focussing more on the part of the game that's easier but also more important. This problem is fixable. They could set up clocks so if you don't make a move within 30 seconds on a board, you lose. After moving you reset to 30 seconds. With that system they will have some time pressure to keep the game moving, and there also won't be a simple easy strategy that completely dominates them. You don't have to be super competitive to think about how to win and what is an effective way to play. You just have to be thoughtful. They are clearly thinking about chess strategy (even if they are chess beginners. chess is hard. shrug). I'm just pointing out they could divert a little of that thought to something else, be way more effective, and also dramatically change the style of the game. You don't have to be super competitive to put the thinking-in-service-of-winning which you're doing anyway to a more efficient area. And if you want a game that you can post on your blog and suggest other people use, it needs to have robust rules! They are setting up themselves -- and anyone who listens -- for conflict. Some people will play slowly, lose, and be annoyed. Some others will start to play faster and win all the time. One guy will say, "Don't be so competitive", the other will say, "What do you want me to do? I don't spend more time on this than you, I don't practice, I'm still just as bad as you at chess in general. Should I intentionally sandbag and not try to win? That would ruin it for me."
dbecker 15y ago
I've played a fair amount of bughouse. You are right about the point about bughouse strategy. Stipulated. These guys are enjoying themselves. They feel rejuvenated for work after playing it for a few minutes. Why impose your priorities on them and claim "it's a terrible game" and suggest they need a "solution." It'd be like Lebron James telling you not to play H-O-R-S-E because it won't help you become competitive with him at basketball. If you like playing H-O-R-S-E, it doesn't matter that it won't help you beat him.
- xenophanes 15y ago
  I'm not imposing anything on anyone. Rulesets have a logic of their own.
  - camperman 15y ago
    I find it amusing that because of your self-imposed slavery to The Rules, you could never have come up with the game of bughouse in the first place. Two boards? Chess is played with one! That's the rules! Dropping pieces on the board? That's a terrible idea! Once a piece is captured, it's captured! Four players? What heresy! Chess is the purest form of mind to mind combat! Besides, this article has very little to do with bughouse per se and everything to do with relaxing the mind in between work sprints. Seymour Cray used to do it by digging tunnels. I doubt that his tunnels conformed to the Rules of Tunnels but he did get quite a bit of work done in his lifetime, which is the point here.
    - dfan 15y ago
      His self-imposed slavery is to logic, not to The Rules.
- ThePawnBreak 15y ago
  I think it's because when one of them figures out he can win almost every game by simply moving very fast, the game won't be enjoyable any more. And that is bound to happen sooner or later.

Isofarro 15y ago

This is not about being super-competitive at bughouse, it's about getting the mind in a working state to quickly go into the zone. Bughouse to the non-serious chess player is random enough to be zany and enjoyable whether you win or lose. It doesn't need to have a super-competitive streak to be useful as a tool for getting the mind up to speed. Spending a few minutes thinking about a concrete problem is sufficient. It's not all about winning at all costs. Its just a warm up exercise that gets the blood pumping.

xenophanes 15y ago
You don't understand. If they ever stop to think about how to play well, they will soon discover they can win by playing worse moves faster. Just a little basic strategy with the clocks will trump a lot of play skill on the board. The only way it can stay the way it is now is if they never think about it much. Which is dumb. Imagine candyland or monopoly was played with clocks and whoever moves faster won. That would be a terrible game for new players. And if they don't understand that the clocks matter, it's in a very precarious position: the moment one of them reads any strategy guide or thinks about it, their game will change itself against their wishes. They are playing with a ruleset that makes something the most important part of the game, then ignoring it in their actual play. The ruleset doesn't do what they want. It's the wrong ruleset for them. It's much easier to win on the clocks than learn chess. They are all easily smart enough to do it. It isn't very complicated and doesn't take long to learn. I don't think if they knew how completely broken there game was they would be advocating it to the internet. The internet has people who know how to play bughouse, the internet will destroy their ignorance which is the only thing keeping their game working. None of this has anything to do with being super-competitive. It's just the easy, lazy way to win: by focussing more on the part of the game that's easier but also more important. This problem is fixable. They could set up clocks so if you don't make a move within 30 seconds on a board, you lose. After moving you reset to 30 seconds. With that system they will have some time pressure to keep the game moving, and there also won't be a simple easy strategy that completely dominates them. You don't have to be super competitive to think about how to win and what is an effective way to play. You just have to be thoughtful. They are clearly thinking about chess strategy (even if they are chess beginners. chess is hard. shrug). I'm just pointing out they could divert a little of that thought to something else, be way more effective, and also dramatically change the style of the game. You don't have to be super competitive to put the thinking-in-service-of-winning which you're doing anyway to a more efficient area. And if you want a game that you can post on your blog and suggest other people use, it needs to have robust rules! They are setting up themselves -- and anyone who listens -- for conflict. Some people will play slowly, lose, and be annoyed. Some others will start to play faster and win all the time. One guy will say, "Don't be so competitive", the other will say, "What do you want me to do? I don't spend more time on this than you, I don't practice, I'm still just as bad as you at chess in general. Should I intentionally sandbag and not try to win? That would ruin it for me."

dbecker 15y ago

I've played a fair amount of bughouse. You are right about the point about bughouse strategy. Stipulated. These guys are enjoying themselves. They feel rejuvenated for work after playing it for a few minutes. Why impose your priorities on them and claim "it's a terrible game" and suggest they need a "solution." It'd be like Lebron James telling you not to play H-O-R-S-E because it won't help you become competitive with him at basketball. If you like playing H-O-R-S-E, it doesn't matter that it won't help you beat him.

xenophanes 15y ago
I'm not imposing anything on anyone. Rulesets have a logic of their own.
- camperman 15y ago
  I find it amusing that because of your self-imposed slavery to The Rules, you could never have come up with the game of bughouse in the first place. Two boards? Chess is played with one! That's the rules! Dropping pieces on the board? That's a terrible idea! Once a piece is captured, it's captured! Four players? What heresy! Chess is the purest form of mind to mind combat! Besides, this article has very little to do with bughouse per se and everything to do with relaxing the mind in between work sprints. Seymour Cray used to do it by digging tunnels. I doubt that his tunnels conformed to the Rules of Tunnels but he did get quite a bit of work done in his lifetime, which is the point here.
  - dfan 15y ago
    His self-imposed slavery is to logic, not to The Rules.
ThePawnBreak 15y ago
I think it's because when one of them figures out he can win almost every game by simply moving very fast, the game won't be enjoyable any more. And that is bound to happen sooner or later.