Call Your Chess Buddy And Join The Chess.com Bughouse Championship Starting July 7
Get ready for wild sacs and spectacular king hunts! The Chess.com Bughouse Chess Championship, the next installment of the Chess.com Community Championships, begins on July 7 at 11 a.m. ET/17:00 CEST. With five days of competition and a $5,000 prize fund, this is one of the variants that attracts some of the strongest players of the series.
Bughouse is one of the most popular chess variants in the world. Whether online or at over-the-board tournaments, chances are you'll always find a group of people eager to play Bughouse. And that's the case even among the chess elite, as you can see in this video of GMs Wesley So, Levon Aronian, and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu having a blast while casually playing the variant.
Bughouse is a chess variant in which teams of two players compete against each other. Players from the same team play side by side on different boards and with opposite colors. When a player captures one of their opponent's pieces, they give the captured piece to their teammate. Their teammate can, at any point, spend a turn to place that piece on their board as part of their army.
This mechanic means one thing: crazy sacs and thrilling king hunts are guaranteed! Combine that with a blitz time control, and you have the perfect recipe for five days of pure excitement and drama.
The Chess.com Bughouse Chess Championship kicks off with eight qualifiers happening across four days. Qualifiers take place from July 7 to July 10, with two qualifiers happening each day. Each is a two-hour arena with a 3+0 time control.
Anyone can join the event by checking the full qualifier schedule and clicking the "Join" button. Players can join as a team or come solo to get automatically paired up by our system, but please note that only teams can qualify for the Final.
As always, we'll be keeping an eye on all participants during the qualifiers. We may require participants to join a video call for fair play checks, where players must set up two cameras from different angles in the room. Non-compliance will result in a team's removal from the event.
The winning teams from the qualifier then advance to the Final, taking place on July 11, where they will compete in a double-elimination knockout bracket. Matches will consist of a 30-minute countdown clock format with a 3+0, and only one team will emerge as the champions!
But even if you don't make it to the Final, you can still enjoy all the Bughouse action live! Tune in to our Twitch and YouTube channels to watch the live broadcast of the Final, with expert commentary by legendary GM Yasser Seirawan and tactics-maniac GM James Canty.
Last year, GMs Jeffery Xiong and Awonder Liang became the first Chess.com Bughouse Champions after a dominant run in the knockout Final.
Their very first match was against the Indian stars GMs Nihal Sarin and Arjun Erigaisi. The match ended with a whopping 11.5-1.5 score for the Americans, with Liang later confessing that he had blindfold settings turned on during the game they lost, which prevented him from seeing the pieces.
Xiong and Liang then defeated the remaining teams with ease, winning the final and "closest" match by a healthy three-point margin to take home the title and first-place prize.
Are you excited to play in the Chess.com Bughouse Chess Championship? Then join the qualifiers starting July 7!
While the Qualifiers are open to all players, only players who team up with the same partner throughout the entire arena can qualify for the Final. Individuals without a fixed playing partner can join the arenas and will be randomly assigned new partners throughout the event. However, they won't be eligible to qualify for the Final. To partner with a single teammate and be eligible for qualification, please follow the instructions in our help article after joining the arena.
