Bongclouding to the New Year | Bongcloud Blitz, Bullet, and Memes
The king is a strong piece - use it!
- Reuben Fine
Especially in the opening!
Who doesn't love to see a fianchettoed king on e2, whether it's played by you or your opponent? That's the thing about the Bongcloud: it's bound to be interesting and fun. It's a new year, and there's to celebrate that, we're going to play the opening joke of the chess world, over and over again. This is either a absolutely terrible idea, or it's genius.
Before we start, I need a disclaimer.
If, after reading this, any of you who decide to play the Bongcloud, don't blame your rating losses on me. Yes, I am risking my ratings to do this, but it's all in good fun. If you care about your rating a lot, I suggest that you don't do what I'm doing. If you do, and your rating does from 1800 to 1700, don't look at me.
Now, for those of you who don't know what the Bongcloud Attack is, forget about it and go on with your normal Ruy Lopez, London, whatever.
Okay, fine.
It all starts with 1. e4 (...mostly any move) 2. Ke2!
The exclamation mark is for surprise effect.
Its modest name comes from @Lenny_Bongcloud, who is literally one of the lowest rated players on chess.com. He would basically play racing kings every game, trying to storm his king to the last rank while his opponent calmly checkmated him. Yet he still won, becoming famous and creating the Bongcloud. GM @Hikaru also helped popularize the opening by playing it for entertainment and amusement, and even played it at the high level sometimes. You might not want to try this at home if you're looking to flatten your rating. It's Hikaru. And yet I'm going to risk it.
Anyway, since its creation, there've been many variations on it. Bongclouding your king on d2 and f2. The Advanced or Extended Bongcloud - where your king runs on a suicidal mission to singlehanded slaughter the opponent's king behind the shelter of one pawn.
Unorthodox? Oh yeah. A joke opening, associated with internet chess humor? Bongcloud memes are great. "Being a poor move, its usage can suggest a self-imposed challenge." That's exactly what I'm going to do today; I'll explain the challenge a bit later. First we absolutely must see some Bongcloud memes.
knowyourmeme
the Bongcloud Era is coming
Fianchettoing the king is always better
knowyourmeme
the Bongcloud is so sound that you need headphones to hear it
knowyourmeme
exactly
wrong. Magnus+Hikaru+Double Bongcloud=110% of the brain
All of you reading have automatically joined the Bongcloud cult.
knowyourmeme
Bongcloud players are superior 
Examples of pro Bongclouding:
To see more beautiful madness, you can go to YouTube and search bongcloud.
Time to go on to my challenge for today. I'm going to do two Bongcloud speedruns, blitz and bullet. I will be recording my screen during these speedruns and posting some highlights here. You can always go into my archive and find these games. My goal is to have an 1 and a half hours of blitz and 30 minutes of bullet, all playing the Bongcloud as white and black.
There's one rule:
- I must play the Bongcloud or a version of the Bongcloud within the first four moves; aka a king move to the second rank, to d1 (d8), f1 (f8), or further.
I'll be trying to get as many wins as possible during 90 minutes of blitz and 60 minutes of bullet. My starting ratings:
Blitz - 1873
Bullet - 1886
I haven't focused on blitz and bullet as much, just playing to relax mainly, so we'll see how much I can get my rating up in two hours with only the Bongcloud. No setting goals - simply trying to reach as high as possible. Yes, there's the possibility that my rating's going to be squished. I'm dealing with 1800-2000s here, and they're taking these games seriously.
I recorded these speedruns in sections. I couldn't do 90 minutes of straight blitz because of other things, so I may record it in either three half-half hour sections or a half-hour and one-hour parts.
During the games, you'll see me chatting with some friends and my opponents about my goal...
So after recording, I realized that there wasn't a way to insert them as files, taking way too long. So instead of waiting for it to load for an hour, I took four hours to create a YouTube channel and upload the videos, then embedding them here. Supporting me by subscribing to my infant channel and/or liking my videos would be very much appreciated... hopefully I'll post more varieties of videos in the future. I might stream too.
Here's the first half-hour of blitz.
I wasn't expecting that great of a start. After that first half hour, I felt much better. A win to start, then a draw, and seven(!) wins in a row, undefeated, with a joke opening?
But my newfound confidence was unwarranted... today is a new day, and I was completely out of it. For the last hour of blitz, I was playing terribly. Maybe it was the distractions, maybe it's a bad day, or maybe, and most likely, it's just the Bongcloud.
Disgustingly bad. I was laughing at myself.
Time to (maybe) redeem myself in the bullet section. I originally wanted to play an hour of bullet, but something came up today and I had to cut it to half an hour. I attempted it earlier today, but got interrupted when I was at 20 minutes. I'm just going to restart instead of going to the trouble of dealing with another video. Let's see how I do with Bongcloud Bullet.
That wasn't too bad... I did get absolutely crushed a few times, but somehow had more wins than losses. I expected that in bullet, early king moves would be punished quickly. I'm sure if I was playing more experienced and better players I would have been knocked out 9/10 times within the first 15-20 moves.
My ending ratings:
Blitz: 1916 (+43)
Bullet: 1901 (+15)
Overall a healthy gain in my ratings... I must Bongcloud my opponents more frequently, maybe I'll get to 2000 that way!
I can hear Hikaru pitying me. If you're reading this, Hikaru, I consider that a success on its own. For us mortals, the Bongcloud is unsound. For you, it could be in your main repertoire.
All in all, that experiment didn't go too badly. Who doesn't appreciate a nice rating gain?
2021 has been a complex experience for all of us, with its ups, downs, lefts, and rights. We've had to go through another year of lockdown, stuck at home, playing chess. Records have been broken... we saw Magnus calmly annihilating Nepo, Abhi becoming the youngest GM ever, Alireza being the youngest to break 2800, and more. Upsets, amazing games, history being made. Goals are being set for 2022. Resolutions. It's a new year and a new start. I could write a long list of everything good that's happened to me this year, and hopes for next year. We have a lot to be thankful for this year, so let's step through and make 2022 as amazing as possible.
I'm posting this at 12:00 a.m. on the dot... Happy New Year! I hope everyone has a great 2022!
