Bughouse chess in Europe (not only)

The game is an evolutionary development branch from classic chess to team realtime strategy. Bughouse (or online shortly simple "bug") is known by many names in many languages like tandem schach, Шведские шахматы, double chess, doubles, tandemshakki, kloc, pasapiezas, holanďany etc.

The mutation of classical chess consists of two main rules:

is played on two chessboards
the captured (taken) pieces does not disappear from the game, but moves to the second chessboard. More precisely, "into the hand of a teammate", from where the player can drop it (he has the option of "dropping move") directly on the empty square, where they could appear in the original classic game. Teammate plays of course with opposite color of pieces (ie. on first board white has as teammate black on second board).

The result of this "mutation" of the chess rules, when compared to classical chess, is a game with the "heat death of the universe" removed, because while in classical chess all pieces are gradually removed from the chessboard, they can only accumulate in the hands one of the teams. If we compare it to classical chess in which there can be 3 states of "end of the universe": 1. someone gets checkmate 2. on the chessboard there are only a few pieces with which even theoretically no side can win 3. both sides force infinite repetition of the same positions rules resolved at the end of the game known as draw, in bughouse chess here only end in state 1 and 3. So muting the rules led to the elimination of energy leaks from the system.

Thanks to the cumulated 2 boards non-fading energy of the chess pieces, the bughouse double chess is a much more tactical game than classic chess. Even material loss strategies have greater penetration, simply because after losing their own pieces, the player can still get a second batch from the teammate, only after moving opponents pieces from both chessboards to the enemy hands the game actually ends, but it can take a long time and be very complicated (and entertaining). More energy opens the window of opportunity for much more complicated strategic and tactical solutions involving temporary loss (from one side, one team) of material. On the other side of the coin, one can also see strategies involving a temporary loss of energy (if the player has the pieces in hand and has no opportunity to drop them on board: if he is in check for example), but to be successful, this strategy must result in the lack of the right figures in the opponent's hand. Which leads us to one of the basic principles of evaluating situations in bughouse chess: the activity of pieces in the form of the ability to influence the flow of pieces to the teammate's chessboard. To put it simply: who can take more different pieces (for his teammates) with fewer moves has an advantage. Thus, the classical material evaluating of the chess position in bughouse chess changes into a dynamic evaluating of the double-position in the form of the ability to influence the flow of energy (kind of pieces) between chessboards. In short: who can trade with his opponent more simply pieces which he needs for his teammate: wins.

Here example of total newbie play with comments of missed good drop moves.

Bughouse could be played without a chess clock by alternating the moves of white and black on the first and second chessboards. Most features of the game would remain essentially unchanged, respectively allocating time to a game or player's move affects "only" the speed of the game. The influence of the time control on the ideal speed of a player is multiplied in bughouse chess compared to classical chess. Bughouse chess resembles the most classic dictation chess, a time control (without chess clocks) at which everyone must play when the referee says "now", or the time determined for each move. As we know, if someone would not move three times in a dictation, they would lose. The same is more or less true in bughouse chess.

Dictation play is usually replaced by time control with time for move. If you don't play three times in a row, it will cost you "only" time. Let's just say we can remove the word "only", because in the final it will give the opponent the opportunity to wait three times in a row and put the piece first on the advantageous field on the board. The best players know this and rarely give the opponents the advantage of time in the form of many extra moves, as a rule they play at a time equal to the time of the move dictated not by the referee but by the time control set on the clocks.

Now comes the control question 1 for the reader:
How fast should an ideal professional bughouse player play in case of time control:

Hour for game
Minute for move (delay alias bronstein)?

The correct answer for ad (a) is: if possible immediately, in a time approaching 0 seconds. For case ad (b): if he plays every move in 1 minute (ie not slower than 60 seconds). Who understood this, knows what realtime bughouse chess is about.
Note: In case of (c) the time per move, or inc alias fischer time control, the answer will be close to ad (a) scenario, but with two important differences: long sitting followed by reduction of game into "last seconds game" (not enough time for opponent to realize win using more than few moves) and winning on time is removed from game. And if inc is really big, its not necessary to play immediatelly, but You can play in 1/N of inc, what in finale will allow opponent (who playing almost immediatelly) to force You play one extra move every N moves, which at high N does not mean a significant handicap.

As in classic chess, the quality of games decreases with the speed and mode of play required by the time control, that is, if players have to move without thinking, the game will be more like an arcade, with the increasing possibility to think longer about each move, the game becomes more mind creative and, in the longer term, more entertaining.

Some (sometimes everyone likes to try) prefer arcade and some rather strategic-tactical battle. The first ones play (and with them many who do not yet know the correct answer to question 1.a) time control of type N minutes per game. The latter, in the long run, prefer time controls that allow you to think longer about each move (typically bronstein alias delay atleast 2-3 or rather more seconds for move). There is several internet chess servers, where you have to play almost all moves in 0 seconds (for all for example FICS, GICS, ICC, Chess.com), to be honest, none of them has been able to implement a delay (or would be enough for bughouse to replace inc per delay). Various tournaments in Europe appear and disappear played in this "arcade speed", often there are big problems with "hiding pieces" (if You have 0 seconds for move, You have 0 seconds to kindly ask opponent for not hiding pieces, literally every second counts, so who violate this rule, gets advantage or its damn hard work for arbiter, even for more arbiters if players do it often).
Somewhere about 3 seconds per turn, starts room for comfortable alerting the opponent that he is hiding the pieces in his hand, a violation of the commonly used rule that all pieces must be seen by all players.
Over the real board (OTB) you can play bughouse with time to move using any digital chess clocks (or even mobile smartphone application), and You can participate in the bughouse gatherings and tournaments organized every year as part of the big european international chess and games festival CzechOpen. On the internet online delay time control was implemented in the past by the BICS project and currently is realized by Onlinea.org. Where You can play various time controls from lightning (several seconds for move) to slowest (like one day for move) bughouse chess.

What you learn at a slower pace can usually be applied at a faster rate, but it cannot be applied vice versa. (For example the ability to find a quick checkmate is always useful, the "art" of ultra fast (pre)moving (with mouse) and flagging an opponent on time in last seconds is completely useless when playing over the real chessboard, not to mention any time control with non-zero time for move.) Another reason to play at reasonable speed (ie slow enough): You can learn a lot during the game itself (for this reason some top players if plays N 0 time controls recommends to be N higher a bit, to increase time for thinking in situations when opponents are forced to wait on our move).

In general time control 3 0 (or X 0 in general) is obsolete for all chess variants including bughouse doubles chess, same way as 5 0 is obsolete for standard blitz chess, where most people prefer time control with some time per/for move like 3 2 etc. It's only a matter of time before new players realize that a 3 0 bughouse is actually the same as a 1 0, plus annoying waiting, and most will stop playing the bughouse because this properties places it among the disciplines suitable mainly for young people fast with a computer mouse and lag-free internet, or with fast hands over the real board. It is also no wonder that many young enthusiastic bughousists later completely abandoned this game. Compare it to blitz chess, which can be entertained and promoted by all generations, whole families. This is much closer to what we in Europe call sustainable development, right?

No wonder that key is the ability to communicate in this realtime team variant of chess. At slower paces, you will enjoy creative / partial analysis during the game, as well as training the team's ability to organize team work, divide roles effectively based on their capabilities, parallel processing we can say in general (what You learn/train here can be experience/skills usable later in the real world) On the other hand, in the fast game, the best players usually use a quick estimate of the situation on the teammate's chessboard and usually communicate literally only a few times per game, because it is sufficient to find a decent move that can be played right away. This is the biggest difference against any slower speed (time control with any time for move alias delay) where you need to try to find the best move (or from a practical point of view, hardest for opponents and easy for own team) in the allotted time! For the best players, respectively. teams are able to greatly estimate the development on the teammate's chessboard, respectively they don't talk where they just know The ability to anticipate development on a teammate's chessboard is actually the best form of communication that saves power to solve truly complicated situations.

The traditional internet chess servers (like FICS,ICS,Chess.com) which supports bughouse never implemented rated simultaneous bughouse chess, which brings to game more fun and as one from many benefits allow experienced players to teach beginners a lot about game principles. Seems like if admins was always too much afraid that simuling bughouse player can get some real advantage or what. The truth is that 2 players simmilar strenght as one simuling wins most of games, simply because they can use paralel thinking deeper in real time and if they have enough comunication skills and works well as team then even potential advantage of single player, ie ability to coordinate, is very reduced (simply 2*1 > 1) or create various interresting game scenarios. Only BICS project (which also had team ratings, that is what really matter, what is relevant for real tournaments results predictions, where couples compete) followed by Onlinea.eu finally did it. And also in CzechOpen bughouse championships simul bughouse is allowed. But it's not preferred by players, because everyone's goal is to win a tournament and the best way to do this is to get a good teammate (understand a teammate with whom I'm stronger than myself). Simply having to play a difficult positions on both boards with a few seconds on the clocks: this is no fun!

Lag alias time lost moving over the Internet between client and server can be a big problem, often damaging the realtime aspects of the game. If there is no lag compensation, players near the server are too favored (eg chess.com, players outside the US did not have much chance at the online World Cup). If the compensation of the lag is only on one chessboard, unrealistic situations arise (in the past, FICS had problems if one chessboard lagged, players on the other chessboard had to play unrealistically more moves).
To put it simply, other chess servers still have a problem with this chess mutation, because they implement a game on two chessboards as two independent games only somehow connected. Incidentally, this is often related to various other unfinished business that spoils the overall experience of the game on these more or less "singleboard" chess servers. A classic example is chess.com, where most bughouse chess players have migrated from FICS, but many now suffer from imperfect interfaces and problems, including web application ergonomics. So while FICS could not be played easily from the web interface (independent of the operating system) and thus from a mobile phone or other touch devices such as tablets, it is possible on chess.com, but for example the click-click method of moving pieces does not work for dropping pieces from the hand, which makes in the end the touch device such as a tablet or smartphone unusable for a bughouse double chess. If we compare it with highly customizable applications written for FICS (where smartmove worked (clicking only on the square of the chessboard and if only 1 piece can go there, it automatically moves there) and especially premove from the hand and also via the right mouse button or typing in the command line and also the ability to write in the chat and then just click send a message to a teammate at the right moment, not mention ability to customize messages, where it was also possible to communicate with a teammate by clicking on his chessboard, which immediately sent a message to a teammate of the Bf1-f7 type indicating that I would support his attack on f7 ) returns us to the ergonomically and functionally limited design of the chess.com web client for the bughouse from many angles a few years back. Even a reasonable attempt to improve image communication encounters the inability to customize the size of buttons and their position on the screen, even in the paid version of membership, which makes them difficult to use during the game. In short, on the one hand, the high tax of a clumsy web client and, on the other hand, the lack of enhancements supporting player comfort, at least to the level of older telnet servers equipped with enthusiasts with well-tuned applications. And at the moment, it doesn't look like any quick improvement in a situation that combines a slow interface with an emphasis on an insanely fast time control with zero time for move (like 3 0). Which, together with various months not repaired errors such as unpredictible changing a piece in your hand while dragging it, makes the game far from enjoyable when played fast. Not to mention that one thing is not to compensate for the lag and it's completely different not to measure it, so confused players don't know if their web browser is freezing or if they have a lag. One has to ask: why does the server support only the bullet version of bughouse chess (all server-held tournaments are at this time control) on the one hand and not solve server-client-ergonomics-player problems on the other if at the same time, it could support not only bullets but also slower versions (with time per/for move, eg. inc or even better some implementation of delay time control) ? Dissatisfied players, starting with beginners and ending with champions, who had no problem finding teammates for a few games at FICS at the time of its greatest glory, are certainly not the best advertisement for servers like chess.com unless the situation improves significantly. At present, the perfect support of the game from touch devices should be a matter of course for such a large server as chess.com is without a doubt. Also, for many of these reasons, it doesn't make much sense to focus only on the bullet version of the game, as it is possible to support also slightly slower variants (blitz speed can play and enjoy whole family while bullet is for few insane fast players only) that could be played by players from all over the world under fair conditions and not just bullet specialists sitting near the server.

In 2020 the beta version of onlinea.org, a small specialized project on the bughouse doubles chess, resp. its eu node finally implemented a truly comprehensive lag compensator algorithm after years. And thus moved the issue of lag resolution near a whole new level, where it would be possible to parameterize what level of lag to allow in the game. So the organizational question remained what lag to allow in the game? Maybe it would be possible to go in the direction of some credit, after which the lag will no longer be compensated for the given player in the given game. Or, conversely, if the average lag in the game exceeds a certain limit, the game will be aborted.

In 2021, the onlinea.eu team also implemented a game from an alternative starting position, so it is possible to play so-called wild bughouse chess. This gives this game a whole new dimension and possibilities, similar way as Fischer random chess, also known as Chess960, is a variation of the game of chess, now You can play variant of bughouse chess. What is something on FICS many called for.

The greatest adventure you can experience in a really good team. And with good friends. And of course against good opponents, whose level quite logically increases with the number of games played. It is why taking part in gatherings and tourneys is strongly recommended :) And meanwhile You can training online and meet there potential good partners also ... Bughouse Chess gives people space to learn how to create a good team, it can be very useful in life.