The Basics of Bughouse

Welcome back to my blog, and today we're going to talk about some basics for new bughouse players to get started (my honest reflections).

Bughouse, like many other variants, is very different from regular chess. There are amateurs who are better at bughouse than grandmasters. Granted, your tactical skills still apply, but there is a great deal of knowledge involved with quickly analyzing the position and adjusting and general strategies. Let's get started!

Castling ... Keep The King Safe!

the memes arent loading 💀💀💀💀💀💀

Just as a note, I'm not saying that castling in bughouse is always bad, but new players who castle early can get in trouble quite easily. Here's why:

Let's look at the following position:

In this position, the g7 square is exceedingly weak. One very common strategy in bughouse is to target the g7 square, even when your opponent's king isn't castled.

White can do this by placing their pawn on h6 (p@h6) creating large-scale weaknesses in Black's territory. What's the problem if I just recapture, you may ask? Well, one idea is to place a pawn on g7, forcing your king out. If you move the rook, then a queen mates you, which is never a good thing. (You don't want any pieces to be able to mate you, generally). If you take the pawn, then placing a knight on h5 (N@h5) will also make it so when you move back a queen will mate you (or a pawn on g7 can do significant damage). You shouldn't take this as the rule for always, you should just keep in mind that sometimes the king is far safer in the center because it is protected by a pawn center and there are no obvious weaknesses around it.

The same goes for longside castling, except it can often be worse because there are even fewer pieces defending the king that way. A well placed pawn on a6/a3 combined with a few pieces can easily be a death sentence. That brings me to my next point,

Mate Over Material

Many newbies are extremely materialistic like in chess, and this is generally something you should be wary of when playing bughouse. 

In some cases, it doesn't matter if you sacrifice a queen if you get a mating attack with enough pieces. This is perhaps the most important principle in bughouse because all the matters is getting to the king, and fast. Let's look at a position similar to the first one, except White's queen is attacked.

In this position, White's queen is attacked. Now, depending on the pieces you have, you could make a choice. With a queen in your hand, the move p@h6! is extremely strong because you can open up the position, and it really doesn't matter if your queen is captured because after you take the pawn a queen will mate him.

The point that I am trying to get across here is that you need to be prepared to sacrifice material if it gives you a mating attack or even chances of a mating attack. It is not uncommon to sacrifice material in order to defend your king, which follows the same principle.

In fact, there is a bughouse opening that goes 1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 d5 ignoring the threat on the knight and sacrificing it for additional defense (and activity) in the form of the f6 pawn preventing Ne5-Ng5, B@e5, and other attempts to make Black's life harder.

This doesn't mean that you should be sacrificing single one of your pieces; especially if you are sacrificing a queen, make it count! Like I said, bughouse is a game of improvisation, and you should make the best of the pieces that you have. If you don't have a queen in the above position, then it might not be a good idea to play pawn @h6 and play for the mating attack. (You can try to figure out how two knights would also cause mayhem, and I would play p@h6 with two knights anyways.)

What are the most valuable pieces of material?

Okay, so now I'm going to attempt to make a material ranking system for Bughouse and the reasonings behind them. (Don't blame me)

Queen: 10. The queen is still the most powerful piece in bughouse, since it has long ranged strength and all the advantages in chess. Not really a surprise that it's ranked this high I think. (It has an ability to finish off mating attacks and cause the opponent to be wary (thus diverting their attention to other matters).

Knight: 7. This ranking is very different from regular chess; since knights are very valuable in bughouse. They are amazing at attacking and with pawns can be very dangerous (i.e. knights on h5 and h6 with a king on h8 puts it in a mating net with p@g7 coming. 

Bishop: 6. Bishops are slightly worse than knights but they should not be discarded. They have long ranged power and without a knight on f6 can be dangerous on the a1-h8 diagonal. (Also have other important uses like blocking checks, defending pawns, etc. which knights are not as good at)

Rook: 4. See, rooks aren't very good in bughouse. Here's why. They don't really have too much power to maneouver and are easy to stop. (For example, a rook on g3 attacking g7 can be countered with a mere pawn (p@g6) while a pawn on h6 forces Black to make concessions.

Pawn: 3. Honestly, pawns are almost as useful at rooks, for the reason that they are the most effective at playing defense and also are used extensively to open up your opponent's position (p@h6).

Coordination ... with your pieces and with your partner

As you can probably tell, this section is not going to be explicitly about the bughouse chessboard, but about one of its most important features: coordination with your partner. 

To make this clear, it's really hard to win without communication with your partner. This especially applies to OTB bughouse.

Let your partner know which pieces you need! This will greatly increase your chances of success; if you know what you need and your partner knows what they need the game will flow much smoother. 

It's also important to tell them if a piece gets you in trouble. One common sacrifice in bughouse is on f2/f7 (if allowed), and a knight and queen can often get you mated. If your partner doesn't know this, they might accidentally trade queens and you're fried right out of the opening.

I think most of this point is relatively self-explanatory; just try to talk to your partner and you can even discuss stalling strategies throughout the game as long as you're not doing it too much (or you'll get down on time; I'm going to talk about Time Management in the next section).

I've also never seen someone win without coordinating with their partner if that's any encouragement !

Manage Your Time!

I'd like to end with one of the most important principles in Bughouse; and that is to always manage your time. I'm sure you already know the strategy of stalling; that is, if you have more time than your opponent, you can stall and force your partner's opponent to move. 

This can have many benefits; for example, if you really need a piece and are up 20 seconds on your partner's opponent, you can just stall and your partner can obtain the piece. In Example 4 above, if you were up 20 seconds, you could just wait for the rook or queen to come to you and then mate your opponent.

Let's now take it from the other point of view. Your partner is about to get a rook, but you're down 20 seconds on your partner's opponent. You have no mate, and so now your opponent has time to consolidate their position. 

I think this example exemplifies the importance of paying attention to your clock and playing fast. Even if you are down material, if you are up 30 seconds you are probably still winning the game because your partner can just get you pieces. Time is an even greater asset in bughouse than material. 

I'd like to end by saying that you shouldn't always just "stall" unless you have a clear way to use that piece. Sometimes keeping a time advantage can pay off later, and so called "sac-stallers" often waste all their time and then realize that they don't have time later. So keep that in mind. Everything in bughouse is about balance; you don't want to stall too much but use it when necessary.

Conclusion and the "Congratulations, you made it to the end of this blog!"

Thank you all for reading this blog. I hope that you learned a lot more about different bughouse strategies and are inspired to play it more in the future.

If any of you are interested in playing a game, you can chat me and we can partner together to show how these strategies actually work in real-time (I'm only 1800-1900 bughouse though so I might lose some games lol)

Have a great day, and stay tuned for future blogs!  

key