Bughouse for Beginners: Defending Against Sacrifices

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 better by being a sac defender. By knowing how to think about the sacrifices, you will be able to brush them off easily. Then you will want your opponents to sac all their pieces against you. 

This won't so much be lines which should be memorized. Bughouse isn't really like that. The point of this post is to help you develop good judgment in a wide range of positions.

Black has allowed White to take the e5 pawn.

Here if Black gets a Bishop, they can put it on d4. For this reason I recommend not taking. Even if Black doesn't get the Bishop, your partner is pressured to hold the Bishop. This alone makes it worth ignoring the free pawn, and developing. Instead...

This is an excellent move. White ignores the e5 pawn, and invites Black to sacrifice the Bishop on f2. Notice that 3.Bc4 gives White's King extra room, and 3.Nc3 does not. 

If you are able, it is a good idea to artificially castle. 

But how should you play if you are Black? Then your opponent has the first move. Let's look...

White began by moving only the King's Knight, perhaps hoping to intimidate their opponent. But there is little to fear here. Let's flip the board around from both of these example positions and see it from the sac sitter's perspective. In both cases the "attacker" (is it really an attack with one piece?) is struggling to find constructive moves without pieces. 

First example flipped around

Second example flipped around

Some useful rules of thumb are as follows:

1) Develop. Try to move all of your pieces before moving any piece twice. 

You might want to interpret this rule a little loosely, but it is still a good guiding principle. A good proverb from the ancient Chinese game of Go is "Don't go fishing when your house is on fire." That's exactly what the Nxe5 move in the first example was. 

2) Create space around your King. The more space your King has around him, the more alive he is. 

Move your King's Bishop, and move your Queen. The Queen's home square is a good place for a King to retreat to. 

3) Move your e and d pawns. 

White has "won" a Queen, but is probably going to lose the game. Strong players often don't enjoy the random pool and this the most obvious example of why that is. White is 90 percent dead before the game even started. As White's partner, you are virtually powerless to do anything to save the game. Moving your King's pawn is a must. 

4) Play fast

5) Prevent sacrifices you can't accept

In this final position, Black can't really decline the sac on f7. The loss of a rook, combined with the positional damage to Black's Kingside, is too much. So Nh6 is sometimes the best option. 

What to do if the sac sitter is not your opponent 

If your partner is sac sitting, I don't really know any good advice. (Try your best, I guess?) But if the sac sitter is your partner's opponent, and suppose you are stuck with the Black pieces, try this opening. 

Remember that the two boards constrain one another. You can play against the person diagonally from you by starving them of pieces, or by forcing them to hold trades in order to starve you. These are considerations behind my recommendations--not sacrificing too much too soon, and not grabbing too much material. 

Of course bughouse is a sacrificial game. But don't fear premature sacrifices. The clue is in the name. Premature.  

I hope this helps.