Jared Bughouse - Bughouse with only 2 players

My 7 year old son, Jared, created this game which I’ll call Jared Bughouse.  Well, I helped him refine the rules a little, but the basic idea is his.

I decided I’d share the game in a blog entry so others can enjoy it.  Without further ado, here are the rules:

1. The game is played with two players.  One player starts with white, and one with black.  Since the game is asymmetrical, it makes sense to play two games, once with black and once with white.

2. The game starts with a completely empty board.

3. White moves first, placing their king anywhere on the board except for the middle 16 squares (defined by the squares c3-c6-f6-f3).

4. Black moves second, placing their king anywhere on the board, except it can’t be on or adjacent to the white king, nor in the center 16 squares.

5. Play then alternates, white moving first.  Each player either moves a chess piece normally, or drops a piece onto the board like in normal bughouse, the only extra restriction being that queens cannot be dropped on the board.  As usual, pawns cannot be dropped on the first or last rank.  It is important to note that queens can’t be dropped, since that would give the first player too much opportunity to checkmate black.  However, you can still get a queen by promoting a pawn.

6. When capturing a piece, you must immediately give the piece back to your opponent so that they are free to drop it onto the board later.

7. Play continues until one side checkmates the other.

That’s it!  You’ll find that the game basically involves white continually checking black until white checkmates the black king, or he runs out of checks and then black starts checking white repeatedly.  It’s obviously completely different from normal chess, and quite a bit different from normal bughouse chess, as well.  But it’s a fun game to play if you want something like bughouse but only have 2 players.  And it also helps teach kids to learn to coordinate the pieces together to try to checkmate the opponent.

Here is a video of a sample game below.  Give it a try and let me know what you think!