It's universally accepted in standard chess that piece development is important, and that neglecting it leads to indefensible or hard to defend positions. The chaotic nature of bughouse means that it is less obviously true that there is a need to ...
In the last post, I recommended Black respond to 1.e4 with 1.Nc6. I now think 1.Nc6 doesn't work at all. (You will need to visualize a bit, and you will also need to forgive some places where I inserted some nonsense chess moves to get to Spell Ch...
Spell Chess is an imaginatively crafted variant. It's the best one in the /variants part of Chess.com. Sort of close to chess, and also unique. All of the standard rules apply, but each player has 5 freeze spells and 2 jump spells, and these spell...
Magnus Carlsen has announced that he's not going to defend his title of world champion. If I were Ian Nepomniachtchi, or Ding Liren, I wouldn't play in a match which doesn't include Carlsen, the strongest human player. I wouldn't see the p...
In bughouse, relative mastery is rather straightforward to achieve. Whereas in standard chess, years of dedication may pay off very little, many bughouse players achieve a rating of 2300 and higher in less than a year. This is because bughouse is ...
Theory Bughouse is far too chaotic for theory to play the role that it does in standard chess. In standard chess, theory may proceed for thirty or more moves. This is possible because there are no external factors, such as a possible Knight and ...
Part of a comment from a now closed account which expresses the thoughts and feelings that many Chess players seem to have about engines. I don't use computers before a game, only after. And so many times I analyze a game where I thou...
Since my previous posts on variants, why they work, and why they don't, I've been hearing from some inventors and designers of variants. A variant has been implemented based on my an idea of mine. Here I develop and sometimes revise the ideas in o...
You should not only be ready for your bughouse opponents to sacrifice on you--you should want them to. It might seem scary at first, but eventually you can learn to swat aside any early attack. Instead of being a sac sitter, you will do bette...
It can be very difficult to develop a good idea. How do you build on something memorable, yet simple, in such a way that doesn't let it spiral out of control? Musicians, poets, novelists, and of course film directors all experience these diff...
What's the most fun you've had with a chess variant? Perhaps like me, it's playing bughouse, which is not only innately fascinating, but a good way to make friends and interact with people who are not solely interested in taking all of your elo...
The buttons in bughouse allow players to make requests without typing. There are buttons such as "trades are good", "trades are bad", "sit", "go" and requests for each of the pieces. FICS has some good buttons, and some questionable ones, includin...
The Sicilian Defense in Chess is a double-edged fighting weapon. Whenever a strong Grandmaster is in a must-win situation as Black, they will often respond to 1.e4 with 1...c5. This move controls the d4 square, without being vulnerabl...
Often in the random pool, I'm playing as a 2400 with three 1800 players, and I have noticed a few recurring patterns; opportunities that are often missed. There is no real structure to the things that 1800s tend to miss, so I just give these as th...
You've probably got that one player, always rated 100 or so points higher than you, who you seem to do well against. If not, then you've definitely got players for whom you are that "good customer"; players with significantly lower ratings who are...
Chess is a game of complete information. You can look at the board and know what's going on. Sometimes you might need to know if one side has moved their King or not, to know if it is legal to castle. But in that case, you could just look at the s...
Jarl Carlander: Could you tell us a little about yourself, and how you found bughouse? HelmsKnight: My dad taught me to play chess when I was five years old. He basically introduced me to how the pieces move and got me to pla...
In chess, 1.d4 used to be considered a little taboo. During the romantic era, it was rarely seen. Players did not know how to handle the closed positions. Later, that changed. Most of the games from the Capablanca-Lasker (1921) matches and Capabla...
When parents ask chess coaches why their children should study chess, the coach will often give an answer which might well be true of other games. Chess brings out discipline, patience, a fighting spirit, and other worthwhile traits, in anyon...
Every bughouse player has different reasons for being drawn to the game. Some like the collaborative aspects, some like the increased depth, and some like the fancy checkmates. I'm sure if you try bughouse, you will be hooked like I was. This is a...
Preliminary Remarks on Chess and Bughouse Theory Much of chess opening theory goes out of the window in bughouse. Some of the most common chess openings are just not feasible, or barely feasible, in bughouse. The Sicilian defense is at best expe...
The author of this post, RattleShakeFries, hails from an old site called FICS ((fantastically inaccurate chess site (not to be confused with FICS, the free internet chess server). Most blogs on bughouse, I imagine, contain examples of patie...
