Bughouse features request

I suppose some of this things are already requested, but not sure which so i will write down everything in my mind.

Currently the communication options are just terrible. Chatting is way too slow and ineffective for the dynamics of bughouse. So some kind of sound related buttons will be great. Also it can be implanted some sort of team speak instead of the buttons.

An easy way to feed your partner moves - for example in FICS when you simply move on your partner's board he sees the move as a suggestion. The majority of players here are under 1700 and if you can't communicate fast and easy and feed them moves as well you just can't have a normal game.

Predrop a piece you don't have yet. This is very important for cross mates situations where your partner can take a piece for you to mate but he gets mated in one. So his opp premoved the mate and you cannot predrop a mate. It also will be very usefull in flag fights, because when i want to drop a piece which is yet to come i will lose like 2 seconds instead if instant predrop.

A draw option. There was a discussion on this topic which i didn't follow closely, but it's pretty clear to me we need a draw. If your opponent gets you in perpetual check at the moment it's equal to checkmate. He can just repeat it a 100 times until a mating piece comes up. Draw by mutual agreement is also a good option in situations of cross mates in 1 which i described above.

Equality of the your board and your partner's board. They should be same size, because bughouse is one game and both boards are equally important.

Formula for bughouse for example i don't want to play for +0 neither to get partnered with under 1800 players when i seek a partner and opps.

I agree with it all...I'd change the last one to be a re-sizable board for partner--I'm ok with a smaller board for pard but I need to see my board..old eyes..  

Agree.

This is just basic stuff that would help get chess.com close to par with FICS and other servers.  If chess.com wants to PASS other servers in features, then let's see some innovations like fischer random bughouse, 3/4/5 board bughouse, or automatic bughouse tournaments (either same partner against different teams, balancing color/opponent in 2 team matchups by 1 game each matchup for multiples of 4 games total (white and black vs. each team member) OR a 4 person group where you partner an equal number of games with all 3 others to decide an individual winner).

Fischer random bughouse?  Now there's an idea.  Some of the other variants might be interesting too.  However, you need four players for a bughouse match, and you might wait a long time to get four players for bughouse variant match.  3/4/5 board bughouse also has the issue of a potential long wait, since most bughouse players will go for the standard 2-board version.

Bughouse tournaments may happen at some point - I certainly hope so.  The tricky thing is that you need to handle situations where one member drops out part of the way through, or where you're one player short, leaving one person without a partner and one team without an opponent every round.  These problems are not necessarily insurmountable (for example, latecomers could be allowed to join as reserve players, or engines of various strengths could take a reserve player role), but they need some time to think through the potential complications and come up with a good solution.

In general I would agree with Sorsi's suggestions.  I'm not totally convinced by 3-fold repetition unless you have repetition (or no moves) on both boards, but otherwise I'd agree with everything.  I do think BughousePlayer is right, though, that the other board should be resizeable so we can make our own board larger.

He's completely right about the draw. Repetition is draw not mate. I think adding in team voice chat is WAY better than communication buttons and would be a huge benefit above Thief. I also think instead of suggesting moves, it could overlay an arrow depicting the suggested move.

I do like that mate on a board is faster than cross-board mate here since that more closely resembles real life, but I agree that you should be able to pre-move and drop pieces.

On more thing which would be nice is timestamp. I flagged in a blitz game even though I premoved all simply because my connection sucked.

I like (second, or third) this idea.

If you like fast games, how about 3-check bughouse?  Probably wouldn't last many moves.  You'd need to be careful about leaving empty squares next to your king.

1|0 might be the best time control.

Meh, I learned pretty quick I suck @ 3-Check.

I'm just okay (so-so) at King-of-the-Hill (KoH), but can (and can't) see extending Bug or Crazy to that.

Variant madness is just... Crazy... once you start considering all of the permutations.

Crazy, and Bugged-out crazy are nearly enough for me... start adding variants + variants and we start confusing new players (my only concern, but, significant enough, we should probably keep initial exposure targeted to new players; too many variants might confuse or clutter things up).

Hello @HigherContrast,

I'm not sure about prioritization of feature requests, but, we (some of us) raised a little bit of hell upon initial v3 release to fix some buts many of us noticed. Most of that has been addressed to a degree of satisfaction (such that I haven't paid much attention since about 3 or 4 weeks after the v3 release of Chess.com).

@piotr dealt with ratings and team matching, and it has improved greatly since initial release ...

https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/rating-adjustments-and-unbalanced-teams

* Comment #15 was notification of (server) update, and

* Comment #18 provided specific details...

I noticed a significant improvement in matching and ratings adjustments after that change took place, and I'm satisfied with it.

If you think that something is still off or could be adjusted or changed to improve things, could you articulate some specific details? (We're all open and welcome to updates and changes if they improve things.)

Higher contrast is talking about the matching, not rating adjustments. Players above 2200 (even 2000) find it hard to find suitable matches. 

You either get matched against 2 players with a combined rating of less than 2200, you get linked with a 1500 for +1 or you're linked with an 800 with +/- odds. In the latter, if you roll the dice, you typically lose. Chances are that guy doesn't know how to move, sit, or not get mated in 5 moves against a player rated 1500, but there is almost no way you can mate a player rated 1600 in less than 15-20.

BTW this happens when I know there are at least 6-7 players >2000 online. It leads to a string of resigns before move 1 or accidentally after move 1 leading to serious rating correction on the order of -15. You are left with the choice of play through (no fun for anyone) or abort (disruptive to all).

Yeah, I think it currently takes the first available match.  For people in the mid-ranges, that's probably OK; I may get paired with 2000 players against a couple 1500s, or with a 1500 against an 1800 and a 1200, and it's roughly even, more or less.  But maybe a 2000 player should be able to create a seek that will not find anyone below, say, 1400.

And if that means they sit waiting for ten minutes before they get a match of three other 1400+ players, they can choose whether they want to wait or expand the allowed range.

BTW, if we really want to combine variants, I think you can combine bug and crazyhouse.  When you capture a piece, it goes into a pool of pieces from which both you and your partner can draw for drops.

Of course, 3-check and KotH are easy to combine: you just have additional ways to win.  The 3-check rules will make you very, very careful about trying to rush your king to the center of the board.

So, the ultimate variant is Fischer Random 3-check KotH CrazyBug, played at 1|0.  The only way to make that any more insane would be to add fairy pieces, such as in Chess With Different Armies.

Always played unrated, of course.  (any variant combos should probably be unrated)

I posted about combining variants in the Chess.com Feedback group here: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/variant-combinations 

I agree with all of what Sorsi said.

Buttons please!

Rating formula for partners is a MUST! I also realized that there is no chance to abort the game, why is that? Does some of staff notice our posts here? 

Once in the past it was realized -https://crazymaharajah.dreamwidth.org/

As a ~2000 rated bughouse player on chess.com, I agree that we need to be able to feed moves to opponents more easily. Moving the piece on their board should light up that square or draw an arrow for my teammate. Right now I have to type it out.

I agree with all of what Sorsi said. Buttons please! And Pre-drop. All those things are NORMAL in online bug since 15 years or so. Cant be THAT hard? Thx

Guau.. estamos a mitad del año 2024, este hilo de sugerencias es del año 2016 y todo sigue igual... nadie mejoró nada, que triste.