Bughouse Champion Isaac Chiu Also Wins Crazyhouse Title

GM Yasser Seirawan has described Crazyhouse as "one-person Bughouse," so it was fitting that NM Isaac Chiu, one half of the 2025 Bughouse Championship winning team, also triumphed in the 2025 Crazyhouse Championship. Chiu won the Winners Final 3-1 against FM Roee Aroesti and then defeated IM Mark Plotkin in the Grand Final that came down to a one-minute decider.

The next Chess.com Community Championship, on December 11-12, is the 2025 Fog Of War Championship.

Final Bracket

• What Is Crazyhouse?
• Qualifiers: Rosen Qualifies Among Other Quaxperts
• Knockout: Isaac Chiu Wins The House Again

What Is Crazyhouse?

Crazyhouse follows the same pattern as Bughouse that captured pieces can return to the board, but it's a game for two players instead of four. Rather than passing a piece to your partner, you can choose to place it on the board yourself instead of moving another piece. Here are the rules that differ from normal chess. 

• When you capture an opponent's piece, it is placed in your "pool" of pieces, and you can "drop" it on an empty square on your turn.
• Pieces may be dropped on only empty squares.
• You may drop a piece to give check or checkmate.
• Pawns may not be dropped on the first or eighth ranks.

It follows that you can get unusual piece arrangements, such as four knights in an attack!

The value of the initiative is huge, since an attack fuels itself as you capture and re-add pieces. There are essentially no endgames—since pieces return to the board—and draws are rare, but they can be amusing when they do occur! 

Draws are rare in Crazyhouse, but Yasser explains how you make them! pic.twitter.com/g5VDTo7LuT

— chess24 (@chess24com) November 7, 2025

The Chess.com Crazyhouse Championship featured eight arena qualifiers followed by an eight-player final tournament. 

Qualifiers: Yasser Just Misses Out

Thursday featured eight qualifiers, which players of all levels could register for. They were 75-minute arenas with a 3+0 time control and produced the following eight winners, all from different countries.

There were some near misses from well-known players. IM Eric Rosen was second in Qualifier 5, while Seirawan narrowly missed out, finishing third in Qualifier 4 and second in the final qualifier, despite winning his last eight games in a row. Seirawan put it down to a lack of speed, though his absence from the final tournament was great news for chess fans, who could watch him commentate instead.

Knockout: Isaac Chiu Wins The House Again

IM Nhat Minh To (DragonB70) has become a variant superstar and had won the last two events in a row, Duck Chess and Seirawan Chess. The signs that he might continue that trend were strong when he qualified immediately in Qualifier 1, 15 points ahead of the eventual champion, and then stormed to a 3-0 win over FM Vladyslav Sydoryka in the Winners Quarterfinals. That momentum came to a crunching halt in the Winners Semifinals, however, as Aroesti (Crazy_Eight) scored a 3-0 victory. The second game typified the kind of non-stop attack you can get in Crazyhouse.

Minh To was then knocked out of the event by the one grandmaster in the field, Guillermo Vazquez from Paraguay. 

Chiu revealed he'd feared the openings of those two players: "I did a lot of preparation beforehand, but I mostly checked games against Crazy_Eight and against Guillermo because I know that those guys have really dangerous openings."

In the Winners Final Chiu faced Crazy_Eight (Aroesti), and the players traded wins in the first two games. Then Chiu pulled clear with wins in the next two, which both ended in checkmate, for a 3-1 scoreline. The first checkmate featured White giving check with two different pawns on f3, then giving checkmate with a third, all in the space of four moves!

That left Chiu in the Grand Final, waiting to see whom he'd play.

Plotkin needed to win four matches in the Losers bracket to reach the Grand Final... and he did! Two 3-1 wins were followed by a narrow 3-2 win over Vazquez. Then, in the Losers Final, Plotkin gained revenge for being knocked down to the Losers Bracket by Aroesti in the first match of the day. It could easily have gone the other way, however. Aroesti won the first game, then was completely winning in the second, but ran out of time hunting for checkmate. Our commentators were stunned.

The tactical miss at the very end was Crazyhouse-specific—Aroesti put a new knight on f4, but he should have made a standard knight move to f4 and kept the other in reserve to place on h6! 

The match eventually went to a final one-minute decider, which was won on time by Plotkin, who had been winning earlier in the game but was lost in the final position.

IM Mark Plotkin survives a powerful attack to win on time and set up a Grand Final against NM Isaac Chiu! https://t.co/pjuZb8MBxM pic.twitter.com/z7gfi6wWPi

— chess24 (@chess24com) November 7, 2025

That meant a Chiu-Plotkin Grand Final, with Chiu commenting, "Plotkin is a speed demon, he’s a really talented player, but he doesn’t look at openings all that much, so I didn’t really prepare for him."

Chiu had some regrets about that idea, as the match was as tight as could be. The players again traded wins, so that at 2-2 the $750 top prize would hinge on another one-minute decider. This time, however, Chiu took control early on and finished off with a checkmating attack to clinch the title.

Isaac Chiu wins the 1-minute decider of the Grand Final to clinch victory in the Chesscom Crazyhouse Championship! pic.twitter.com/XuI8yRiKzb

— chess24 (@chess24com) November 7, 2025

"I did, yeah!" said Chiu afterward when asked if he'd considered himself the pre-tournament favorite. He called it a "great event," adding: "I hope Chess.com continues to run these variant tournaments because I think it does a good job bringing players and audience members something new and exciting to watch."

I think it does a good job bringing players and audience members something new and exciting to watch.

—Isaac Chiu, Crazyhouse Champion

Chiu noted that he prefers Bughouse for the social aspects, but also because it's more balanced, since both teams play with White and Black. The issue is that computer engines reveal White has a big edge in the Crazyhouse starting position because of the importance of the initiative. Chiu feels that the game becoming more popular would be a double-edged sword: 

I would really like if it became popular, because then I could profit, but at the same time I like that it’s just niche enough that people haven’t completely killed it with the engine!

There's now just one Community Championship left before the end of the year—the 2025 Fog Of War Championship on December 11-12. Once again, it's open to everyone, so don't miss out!  

The 2025 Crazyhouse Chess Championship is the tenth event of the Chess.com Community Championship series. Winners of eight qualifiers (each was a 75-minute arena with a 3+0 time control) entered the Final on November 7, which was an eight-player double-elimination bracket. The time control was 3+0, and matches were best-of-four. The total prize fund was $2,500.

Previous Coverage

• Variant King Minh To Wins 2025 Seirawan Chess Championship
• Nhat Minh Defends Title Of Duck Chess Champion
• Moroni Wins Spell Chess Championship For 2nd Year Running
• Awatramani, Chiu Dominate Bughouse Championship
• Tang Defeats Naroditsky, Retains Hyperbullet Title
• Ignacio Unstoppable In 4 Player Chess Championship
• Liam Hereford Crowned Atomic Chess Champion After Explosive Performance
• Rogov Clutches 3-Check Championship In Grand Final Reset
• 14-Year-Old Woodward Dethrones 5-Time Champion Robson
• Chess.com Community Championships 2025 Cycle Kicks Off January And Features 12 Events