Masters Guild

[crazymaharajah]

             



In his new book 2021 "Chess Board Options" Larry Kaufman writes - 

«Shogi is an amazing version of chess, in my opinion the most interesting version of them all. It has only a 1-2% draw rate, and some clubs and tournaments use rules that eliminate even these few draws. It is similar to ‘CrazyHouse Chess’ (the two-player version of bughouse chess) in that these games all allow a player to use captured pieces for his own side. Presumably CrazyHouse and BugHouse were inspired by shogi. But it is a much better game than CrazyHouse because that game appears to be a clear win for the first player when strong engines play each other, whereas with shogi going first is just a modest edge even with the strongest engines.»

Actually crazyhouse was not inspired by shogi, but by the much more complex and intricate medieval game of Rhythmomachy. Where did bughouse come from? This can only be speculated so far, and I believe his prototype is some unknown game. His history is a history of origin, a history of its distribution in different countries under different names.

There are only similarities in the early rules, but as for the names it can be shown by a large list. Some of them can somehow be traced, the origin of others is not clear for example, there is the old name of Canadian (Madhouse) Chess. This is almost as old a name as Double Bughouse.

A late reprint of some of the oldest bughouse rules - 







Chess Mazes 2 (gnv 64) -   

«I remember thinking that I was a pretty decent bughouse player before meeting another group of bughouse maniacs who cracked up laughing at my opening moves… Danger lurks around every corner since you never know when the opponent might get a monster piece that will land on the board and create havoc. Needless to say, bughouse is very addictive; coaches should be careful how they regulate it in class. But it is a great alternative to chess as it teaches tactics and teamwork. I personally enjoy it very much (although I played it much more when I was younger), and I always made sure that my students learned how to play.»

There are three generations in the bug&crazy world. The first generation is players from the pre-Internet era. I have talked about them in previous chapters of this longread - these are the earliest crazyhouse players who remain unknown or are mentioned indirectly, including perhaps Alekhine, who went to Japan in the mid-1930s where he was introduced to shogi and who Pritchard claims knew about crazyhouse.

 

This also includes chess inventors, NOST, David Pritchard and his associates, a group chess variants fans from Italy known since the 1970s, groups of variants fans from the US in the 1990s and others. 

A little-known sub-variant crazyhouse Dragonfly invented in 1982 by Christian Freeling.
 
 
 

This is also of course a lot of buggers who have played all over the world since at least the 1950s and 60s. I was able to talk to some of them from different countries and they independently say that at that time the rules in bughouse prohibited displaying pieces with mats and limited conversions on the 8th row.   

The second generation is players who played on ICC, FICS, uschesslive, Buho21 and some other resources.

Ebenfelt wrote that prior to early 1997 BGM (Bughouse GM) title was achieved by Chase, Schroer, Gnejs, YogurtSwirl, jtp, Ebenfelt, WhoAmI, ChaseJr, LSS, No1, JKiller, Firefly, pminear.

I posted in the "New Crazy Worlds" chapter a screenshot of pminear's results who had a bug rating of 3047 in 2002, but Chase overcame 3000 back in 1997.

Ebenfelt never later returned to texts about bughouse.

The 2000s were the period heyday.

Bug forums evolved, but it was rare to find anything about crazyhouse. The design of bug forum was identical to the old FICS forum.







Commentary by JannLee (aka tantheman) on games from one of the old tournaments.

Third generation appeared since 2016 when lichess added ability to play zh and players then started to develop channels on youtube and blogs dedicated to bug&crazy.

It should be noted that Thibault Duplessis contributed a lot to the development of the crazyhouse. At that time, FICS was called a graveyard, although many people, especially American players for whom it was something of principle, continued to play there.

Later in 2020-2021 when chess.com added more chess variants it became clear that despite the development of fan communities the official chess will hardly add anything besides chess 960 in the future. So the situation returned to the past same fan communities as before.

The commercialization of chess has become quite obvious. In fact, crazyhouse was probably the only possible expansion of the official program after Fischer Chess. Crazyhouse is not that far removed from the classics and has a number of features inherent in the early chess culture.

Bug is a different game and he causes a lot of criticism and will remain a subculture. There's nothing wrong with this situation because he very popular anyway.

An early book developed a theory of color control:

"Since the main objective is usually to attack f2/f7 or to defend f2/f7, the color of square you want to control is based upon that. As White, you want to control the white squares on your opponent's side of the board, and the black squares on your own side of the board. For Black, you want to control the black squares on your opponent's side of the board and the white squares on your own side." Chapter 4- Controlling Colored Squares (Comprehensive Bughouse Chess)

The also applies to crazyhouse and mastertan used color theory in famous article "Light & Dark : A Visual Guide to Crazyhouse". 

I think this theory can be improved these days and it will be even more convenient for quick learning. However, these days, video footage is more important. I haven't followed how good the engines could be in the bug, but I know these developments have been going on since the early 2000s. I think this coordination for two boards against a two mans is not been a nontrivial task for engines these days.

I think the new fourth generation of players will have serious knowledge in all kinds of crazy and bug games, including possible blindfold bughouse tournaments like demonstration Timur Gareyev and his partner. 

Some of the many varieties of bughouse are very complex, while others will resemble a circus or an underground party. 

In the chapter on genealogy I also explained that there are many little-known sub-variants of crazyhouse invented long before the existence of the Internet and not mentioned in the genealogy - Circe Chess, Bennie Chess.

Pocket Knight Chess is generally one of the oldest proto-variant of crazyhouse known since the early 20th century.

Of those shown, for example Replacement chess were mentioned back in the old Fairy Chess Review magazines devoted to certain large areas of chess problems and fairy chess in 1940. 

 

It must be said that fairy chess has elements close to zh and it is some separate topic and it is also important that crazyhouse from the late 19th century to the 1940s it is a completely unknown story.

We may never know all the facts about the origins of the games, but we have opportunities to play them.

One day while reading r\chessvariants I found an interesting idea about the possible revival of games from the old Zillion shell in a new form as Zillion Fairy-Stockfish and thought that this new generation of players already had arrived.

Studying a community that has existed in one form or another over a long period of time, I want to say what makes it so special. It is a community of players united by a love for the pure art of flawless play, something akin to a medieval guild of masters.