Secret Level Crazyhouse

Bughouse Openings: Incomplete History

2023-03-22T22:23:14Z

I call history of bughouse openings incomplete because all information is rather disjointed and I doubt anyone can trace their history.

I was also wondering if it is possible to find where the change in the rules of drop for 2 and 7 horizontals is written. The 1974 Dutch rules are already out of date, but I no was able to figure out when exactly.

David Pritchard, titanic personality in history of chess variants, ironically remarks in his review of the very first about bughouse book Siamese Chess How To Play...How To Win! (1992) in 1994, "So how is it possible to fill 200 pages intelligently on so slight a variant?".

I`ts funny, Pritchard finds an explanation for one of the early names of bughouse - Siamese Chess because people played in pairs like twins.

In the image for the title of this chapter this is a fragment of an extremely rare work by Yasser Seirawan, or at least he was its compiler.

An old player once told about this work, complaining that he couldn't find it anywhere.

"In late '90s I found a PDF file of Yasser Seyravan's publication on one of his Swedish (Bughouse) openings in format Yugoslav encyclopedia chess openings. I don't remember exactly, but I think it was Defense of Alyokhin. A unique publication, which I unfortunately lost".

Almost no one these days knows anything about this work. When I found this fragment, I studied it trying to figure out how I could learn anything more about it. I did not succeed and when I showed this fragment to some old players, like Zyxon (aka-Firefly) he said he was seeing it for the first time.

It must be said that openings and strategies appeared on Internet in mid-1990s

Look at these titles - Mongolian Attack... Federkevic defense... Fortress Defense... The file was edited in 1995 and almost certainly within a few years the theory had already been modified.

Leaf Gambit is probably the most famous old opening from the 70's.

"I first saw 1. e4 d5 2. ed e6 in 1975, give or take a couple of years, when some of us started playing bughouse at the Hartford Chess Club and pissing off all the serious players with the racket we were making. The first bughouse player I saw play the opening was named Ed Ipacs. Ipacs died in an auto accident many years ago, so we can't ask him if he thought it up himself or he saw somebody else play it. Also, an ex-bugger named Bill Noyes, aka ChaosRules, once claimed that he and his partner invented the opening in 1979, but that would be a few years after I saw it in Hartford. Since we are only two moves into the game, I have no doubt that several players discovered the opening independently." (Errantfischer)

This post is from a long defunct bugboard forum. The forum was created by SuperGrover and later taken over by Chuckmoulton.

According to Chuck - "Supergrover had the bugboard hosted somewhere random. He moved it to my server for hosting. Regular backups were not taken. My server's hard drives crashed. We were able to recover some things from the Internet archive, but they were all frozen in time - you couldn't add comments to those threads. New threads were started. Anything not there is completely lost though."

Bugboard was an amazing cultural artifact because it didn't depend on some big chess website and you could find anything. Discussion of strategies, players, openings, trolling and stories. There were also posts devoted to crazyhouse.

It's like taking a walk into a museum and seeing how bughouse openings were discussed in late 1990s and early 2000s.

It was an attempt to unite the whole scene of buggers of the world - ICC, FICS, OTB and it was actually the largest group of buggers. But even there was rarely an idea to find the origin of openings. Although perhaps it was not valuable because as soon as someone would give a name bughouse openings or claim authorship it would either be challenged or perceived as a lulzes.

It was there that the Zimmerman book project arose. This book included, among other things, an interview with Levon Aronian.

Everything before FICS can be called Dark Ages. Immediately before the emergence of bugboard, there were individual player notes. It was a time of "personal pages", usually in the form of a single HTML page, often without any images. The old ICC players had pagesand photo, and one of the first bughouse chroniclers on the Internet, Anders Ebenfelt, also posted links on his page.

Even then there were interviews with the different players of the time and different stories of how someone lost two jobs because of an addiction to bughouse, of struggles with addiction, descriptions of players styles, fragments of biography.

<Flesh> Ok - Hello everyone. Flesh is here with the man I consider to be the greatest bugger on fics: WhoAmI! Hello, Who.

<WhoAmI> Hello Flesh

<Flesh> Where did you come up with the name "WhoAmI" ?

<WhoAmI> It's a mantra from some books on Self Realizations from some Indian Master

<Flesh> So you practice some sort of Zen ?

<WhoAmI> Well I try to meditate whenever I have some time

<Flesh> What is involved in meditating? How does one do it?

<WhoAmI> Well I don't know how others do it but I just sit there and ask myself over and over again "Who am I?"

<Flesh> Do you ever answer yourself?

<WhoAmI> No, I believe there is no answer (at least no answer the mind can come up with) the answer lies beyond the mind itself

(Sun May 17 20:57:03 1998)

DragonX also attempted classification in the early 2000s. His site existed for a very short time, and only a few fragments have survived.

There may have been some discussions on FICS channel 24, but few people saved them and as we know, it was mostly a dispute between buggers.

This is DrZukhar's project in 2002. I couldn't find anything related to content in HTML files and maybe it wasn't even finished.

I've talked to some of the players about it. I've heard a couple of stories that I can't confirm or deny, I also got it that it's all too scrappy. The bugboard discussions were probably full of controversy, but the board is long gone and modern forums are fleeting.

I asked something like, "How did you play openings bug in the old days?"

exMOНAX: Playing white, I always liked the scheme with 1.d4 2.Nf3 3.Bf4 4.e3 5.Nbd2. Black played either 1...d5 2.exd5 e6 or 1... Nf6, and 2.e5 d5, and 2.Nc3 d5 3.exd5 e6

Bughouse has remained a chess subculture in various countries for several decades, and no one has studied the changes that have taken place in it. Somewhere players could write something down, but even with the advent of the Internet it remained a complete mess. Since when, for example, plays 1. d4 ... 2. a4 ... 3. Ra3? No one will tell you that.

In the past there was more prejudice about bughouse (recall the irony of David Pritchard) it could be perceived as too impulsive, chaotic and "wrong" except for certain groups of players.

Nowadays, when there are a lot of videos with games of high quality bughouse looks more perfect.

Sometimes it seems that the very idea of Encyclopaedia of Bughouse Openings as an ECO counterpart is not that important or it will be an online encyclopedia containing a coach in menu.

This was conceived by a quite some time ago on an old site, the idea wasn't fully developed, but even years later we can watch old games in real time.

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Masters Guild

2022-03-27T03:46:33Z

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.

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Through the Time

2022-03-15T15:18:23Z

"and few can find players who can get through the game without a headache"

Archiv der Spiele oder fortlaufende Beschreibung aller Spiele der Vorwelt 1821

This chapter is a continuation of the chapters "Proto Crazy" and "Decoder zh".

I must disclose with some annoyance the earlier misconception associated with Bierschach, which means "beer chess. Up to a certain point we thought it was an ancestor of Bughouse but in reality it is one of the many German names for Four-player chess.

H. Wilhelm SAUSE "Das Vierschachspiel ... Nebst einer Abbildung" 1841 -

"Four-player chess, or chess among the beasts, or four-man chess, or the great game of pernicious games, is that variation of the original or simple game of chess played by four players on their own board, with two pernicious pieces, in which they are joined by two and two opposite each other, forming one team, and fighting against another."

The game is also described in K. Enderlein "Anweisung zum Vierschachspiel" 1826 under the name Bierschach.

There are also quite a few other mentions, sometimes these books say that two players can, for example, play as two armies at once. The fragment is found in various old books, as well as in German newspapers.

So I had to make edits to the crazy&bug genealogy chapter.

After the translations done by Granach in 2019 and visualdennis in 2021, I took up translations from old chess books myself. I used OCR text services working with both pictures and pdfs and some other methods.

1. - "Archiv der Spiele oder fortlaufende Beschreibung aller Spiele der Vorwelt" which is listed in Pritchard's Encyclopedia as the first reference to The Double Chess Game.

This collection describes completely different games from Rhythmomachy - Das Zahlenspiel (Rythmomachia) to card games and hybrids of cards and chess. As in all old chess books, the description of the games looks very literary, using such words as "your grace", "captive", pawns are called "peasants", the movements of the pieces "allure" and all this is mixed up with speculative arguments about the world.

In one place there is a description of Das Chinesische oder Siamische Schachspiel. I will remind you that one of the many names for bughouse is Siamese chess, but this fragment has nothing to do with what we are interested in. The book also describes bowling and billiards.

But as for the chess section... A lot of very amusing things for our time such as the mention that [chess] "In a pinch you can cut them from potatoes and beets"... The section itself consists of descriptions of half a dozen variants and for us is important only a few fragments.

I translated these passages from the fragment completing the description of Rhythmomachy:

"On the other hand, a player's ability to turn over stones taken by his opponent and then use them against himself, which is lost in chess games, seems to be based on a really lucky opponent and can be used for a variety of combinations."...

"All the struck stones are immediately turned over, so that whichever color has taken fits. They are then set next to the board, and afterwards all or some of them are set again for use by the one who beat them by placing their"...

I must say that I found two books with title Archiv der Spiele, probably the different volumes. Maybe both links are identical and I just don't know how to search in these books, because both links have 1819 on the title page. Pritchard and earlier Tressau was referring to Volume 3, 1821.

The other one contains a description of the Doppelschachspiel

2.- This description explicitly states:

"This year's German invention, whose inventor has not yet allowed us to make it available. He has, however, informed us of preliminary results, noting that it was a game of numbers or rhythms that led to its invention"...

Meaning Rythmomachy.

I can say that this is a real discovery. I knew about Rythmomachy, but I never thought that my fascination with philosophy, familiarity with Boethius' texts and chess variants would turn out to be so tightly connected in the study of the history of the crazyhouse. Rhythmomachy or the number game is considered the chess game for philosophers, and it goes back several centuries. It is also considered related to set theory.

Here are more fragments of my translation:

"This game is not without interest, new considerations and combinations arise which have no place in the ordinary game of chess, and new rules follow from them.

If a special device is needed to remove the distinguishing features from enemy pieces without further movement, and to change them into friendly ones; just as soldiers of foreign armies or prisoners of war who wish to transfer to service are dressed in patriotic uniforms...

Thus, in this game, it is particularly advisable to remove officers from their positions as quickly as possible and bring them into play so that places can be obtained to set up the same-named beaten officers.

There are always three problems when taking a piece: first, whether the piece is covered so that the opponent can take it again; second, whether the piece taken can be taken but the opponent cannot take the piece to be taken against him; and finally, whether, having taken the piece again, one can offer the opponent's king or queen an equal check, cover a disturbing check or attacked piece, double cover his own taken piece or gain other advantages...

According to these rules, the simple exchange of officers in this game, which is practised by good players only when necessary, could become prevalent; and one was required not only to consider carefully what one would gain by capturing a piece, but also whether and where one could put it again, what position a piece of our army, which the enemy would capture, might take in a penal piece, etc. This, however, makes the game more difficult...

It makes the game more difficult than an ordinary game of chess, but the difficulty is not caused, as in the above-mentioned games of chess, by vagueness and excessive imprecision of memory, but rather by a lack of use of the power of imagination.

We want to pay special attention to just one aspect of this question, even though we do not yet have enough experience..."

We see that this discussion of the characteristics of the Doppelschachspiel is reminiscent of the same discussions that arise around crazyhouse these days.

3. - Another reference is this article of this game in the German daily newspaper "Allgemeiner Anzeiger der Deutschen" in 1829.

It is a newspaper essay in which the author reflects on the technical side of the invention, at the same time diluting the everything with arguments about morality, as is typical of old texts. From these reflections on "double chess," one might quote, for example, that "I add, looking at it simply as a game, that it is indecent. That it would be unseemly to disrupt a move opponent, who is already taking a loss, into an even greater one opponent to an even greater disadvantage by taking stones taken from him are also used against him....".

He also notes that "it raises the essence of chess... the game does not remove, it retains the basic features applicable to chess... the positions of pieces in a chess game are not yet computed by further developing the methods mentioned there: are not calculated, this is not a reason for a person to find an interpreted idea...".

The zh element there is called reintegration, and it draws attention to the need to hold in memory captured chess pieces...

At the same time, he calls Doppelschachspiel "apolitical" and notes that "the two most basic moves in double chess have not even been polished." It must also be said that he mentions discussions of the game in 1827 where a "much larger board" was proposed and in 1828.

We decided with visualdennis that when he had time he would do a more detailed translation of this text.

I would like to point out that the word "Doppelschach" which in German usually means "double check" is also found as a reference to a game with 2, 3 and 4-6 players.

In this reference Doppelschach also meaning to the Four players chess and this article is found in full in the German newspaper "Zeitung für die elegante Welt Berlin Mode, Unterhaltung, Kunst, Theater" (Zeitung für die elegante Welt, 1816. n. 101). This word is used here because the description asks players to put two chess boards together (Mitrbeilungen für Schachſpieter).

I also have seen the German word "Zweischachspieler" which means "player in double chess" in books about Bierschach.

4. - 1840 is a description in Tressan's book.

There are some fragments that have not been translated before.

"But one can also think of figures that, from certain points of view, in certain positions and circumstances, may make different movements and strokes than their original ones, temporarily or permanently. This variation is not idle, but opens up a fertile source of new and interesting combinations. Obviously, it can be used in many different ways, of which we will highlight only two and discuss them in more detail at the end of this section, since they are among the most noteworthy. One can, as a recruiting principle, the second can be called the relay principle. Both are borrowed from the Rhythmomachy described by Selene."...

"The principle of recruitment is to immediately incorporate captured enemy pieces into one's army according to certain rules. No further explanation is needed here, since the game of double chess, described in the following sections, is based on this principle... By the principle of staggering, the striking pieces seem to absorb the defeated into their own selves and their movements... In the case of damson-like figures, this can be done by simply raising the striker's beaten figure in a friendly color, which requires nothing more than the figures above and below being colored differently, and the colors of the army being colored similarly. To prevent falling, the stones can be pierced and put on vertical cables attached to the middle of the pedestals." (pg.39)

Thus we see again a reference to Rhythmomachy and a direct explanation of the invention of the game!

"What is recommended in this game is that it shows the skill of the entire army, which increases with the length of each war, as well as the skill of each individual warrior, from commander to private soldier, and that each reward is rewarded. in place by an expanded field of activity. Such rewards or achievements in conventional chess are somewhat paltry. They are limited to the promotion of a peasant to a general, i.e., an abrupt passage from the lowest to the highest with no intermediate steps... According to the echelon principle, a pawn that takes an enemy knight blesses the bound echelon and now walks as a pawn and a knight... If he defeats another bishop, he adds a second relay and walks the bishop, etc... Thus a real system of order is formed, so to speak, which not only gives the owner the pleasure of having the crowd gawking at him, but actually increases his power, since he no longer just attacks the enemy one at a time, but at 8... 2... steps can be reached and defeated."... (pg. 40)

Next there's some more reasoning about the variant.

It must be said that visualdennis once made the surprising suggestion that chess with its captured and drop pieces could have been invented in France. He correctly mentioned the Cafe de la regence, which as we know was the center of chess culture in the early 19th century. But so far this remains only a guess and we only know that the earliest forms of crazyhouse originated in Germany. We can say for sure that the crazyhouse was invented in 1821 or early and so it has been around for more than 200 years.

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Coffee and skittles in glitch house

2022-03-12T18:39:42Z

I noticed that even chess.com nowadays refers to bughouse as name "doubles". This seemed strange to me in the english-speaking world, but it is possible that the original meaning is not so well known anymore.

When people from other countries ask about the origin of "bug house" and why it might have something to do with the game, I point them to features of American culture where hobo was a nickname like adventurers in the adventures of Tom Sawyer. But there is an even more significant aspect of why this game has that name. It has to do with its very essence -- the very thing that literally makes you jump up and down

I have long been studying how individual words from the origins of chess take on a life of their own in different languages, for example the russian word "шпилить" (play quickly, move) is essentially derived from the german ending "spiel"... or "spielen" (play) ... Chess in German is Schachspiel and this word part turns into a russian verb somewhere in the past.

The word bughouse, of course, means mental hospital, and as applied to games it was similar to the synonyms found in Pritchard's books - madhouse as one of the early names for bug. A free interpretation of this marginal slang in relation to the game suggests other interpretations.

In the case of bughouse it is quite interesting that the name conveys the state of play and features of the game. A bedbug infested apartment or hotel room makes you itch and bounce from surprise, excitement, suddenness, annoyance, and irritation.

I think the rare veterans of the game, as well as people who know the language will only confirm my guess.

I had a huge correspondence with a lot of interesting discussions and I still can't make sense of it, understand what was lost, what was left in the mailboxes or I had time to download on my hard drive... With some people I communicated for several years, and with others less because of different circumstances.

As for the crazyhouse, in the context of chess this word occurs quite often and also carries additional meaning, for example, in Beckett's novel "Murphy" in the episode is almost directly crazyhouse chess and in addition notation has a literary and psychoanalytical meaning!

The amazing pychess site that has implemented hybrids of Seiravan chess and zh is also working on making a bughouse implementation and I think it will be better than chess.com

Although chess.com held a world bughouse championship where the team of jefferyx and catask won and it attracted many strong buggers many people don't play there because of their interface.

It would certainly be interesting to have a catalog of all mass bug tournaments.

This is the same as rare old videos that are hard to find because of the low number of views. Some may have already been deleted.

As well as old stuff crazy that can be found in the blogspot archives... implementation for the game in the browser

The history looks like a collection of disparate cultural artifacts.

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Decoder zh (co-authored with visualdennis)

2022-03-12T12:21:56Z

I thought I would finish this story at the end of 2019.

I wrote 8 chapters and it took me about 4 years.

You can see why. We didn't have any of the history I mentioned before. And even though the zh community has been sustainable for over 20 years it is not as large compared to classical chess. Also the people who tried to write about it are just a few people. At the end of 2021 I came back to discord after a long break.

In the process of correspondence in discord I published some of my old notes and also suggested that the research of the zh origin story was not finished.

In discord I met a visualdennis who, in addition to chess and chess 960, was into philosophy. He was interested in my speculations and I provided him with some references. It turned out that he could take apart and translate an old German Gothic script from a book "Das Schachspiel, seine Gattungen und Abarten" (1840)

This seemed unbelievable. My old friends chronatog and okei also took part in this discussion.

We discussed with visualdennis the specifics of this lost history of the game, it was like a detective investigation.

Soon visualdennis was able to make a translation from L.Tressan book and posted it in the public domain

Commentary visualdennis from discord

"from a to g are the rules he describes and what he explains is interesting, mostly he explains how it is written im dritten Hefte des Archivs in 1821 when u read the rules, u realise that it is kind of a mix of Crazyhouse and S-Chess... it is also funny that he himself tells that the way they played with a single set as described in the book in 1821 is quite messy, and it would be much easier to play with two similar sets because with the older set (those tags) there has been confusion and people often forgot to change those tags, or sometimes there were fights over the captured pieces... also that the old set with those tags make stuff harder for people with myopia he says rules are also interesting and quite different from todays zh more like a mixture of S-Chess and Zh in later pages he explains some strategies regarding those rules like how important it is to free the backrank and make room for captured pieces as quick as possible so that you can put pieces in the first rank (which is the rule for drop) for example if u capture queen but ur queen is already on d1, u can drop it to e1 as well if the square is free and such rules etc. etc. what we can conclude from that is that Crazyhouse as it is played today is very likely a later innovation than 1821 at least. and evolved through collective efforts to what it is today."

From visualdennis' commentary we understand that "Doppelschachspiel" is indeed a real proto-crazyhouse! But its rules were somewhat different and it follows that this proto-variant is the ancestor of at least two chess variants.

We also found a fragment of mention of the invention in a later book "Geschichte und Litteratur des Schachspiels"(1874) according to the scan Doppelschachspiel is on page 353 there is some confusion with the search - when you search in a book it sends you to another page.

"13. The double chess game. ("A German invention of this year, ... which, by the way, is very simple, and consists in nothing more than : that every captured stone of the capturing player may be set up again in his army according to certain laws, and now be used in the same capacity against the enemy. That is where the name comes from. " ) Already occurs in Japan and in the numbers game."

Another brief mention in Dutch is in Antonius Linde's 1876 book "Leerboek van het schaakspel"

" 1) In 1821 someone in Berlin came up with the idea of a (64.) Doppelschachspiel, very similar to the usual one, but in which the captured figures belong to..."

I must say the research is hampered by the fact that these old German terms have a different meaning in modern times. The word "doppelschach" itself means "doblle check" in German and actually "doppel" means "double." I have found that the word is present not only in German, but also in old Estonian.

Tressan's book also mentions a discussion about this game where there is an amusing discussion in the style of old times... this discussion is in a German daily newspaper "Allgemeiner Anzeiger der Deutschen".

Thus we come to an even more detailed origin of the game. I also want to thank visualdennis, okei, chronatog, marlonc for their enthusiasm and interest, for their work for the community, and also Vincent who always remains an interesting conversationalist and original chess player.

It should be noted that we do not have accurate information about the game between the period 1821-1874 and also the period after. If we examine Pritchard's references we see references to the book "Jeux d'Echecs Non-orthodoxes". I drew attention to this in one of my earlier chapters, Second History of the House

There are a number of clues in there that you can also try to investigate the origin of the bughouse - in Pritchard's book it's chapter 5 page 55.

Once okei suggested the idea of creating a crazy&bug wiki and maybe someday this will be created using ever better tools to catalog new discoveries.

Nowadays we can say for sure that crazyhouse has been around for 200 years at least since 1821, when ideas related to it were discussed.

comments

Crazyhouse genealogy

2022-02-01T01:16:17Z

The first draft of this genealogy looked like a simple addition. I created a diagram where I tried to show the evolution of crazy and bug and hybrids games.

But a little later I got some new material. It was also due to my communication with the visualdennis, who could translate excerpts from old German books. In our discussion we discussed sources of scattered information and exchanged the links we found.

This research progressed in several directions at once. Part of the work involved finding historical sources and we found some traces in chess literature before 1840.

I also saw for myself the need to create a classification of the different names and varieties of crazy&bug that mostly date back to the 20th century.

This fragment contains basic information about the development of crazyhouse:

"Disposition of captives (captured unit not removed from play)

Cv1 -- Conversion

In conversion chesses, captured enemy units are not removed from play, but instead become friendly units of the same species. The best known form of this is Chessgi, a popular variant derived from the Japanese game of shogi. A converted unit belongs to the captor, who can re-enter it on a vacant square on any later move, instead of moving a unit already on the board. The set of captured units is called the reserve, and the placing of a unit from the reserve instead of moving is called a drop. A pawn may not be dropped on its eighth rank. A pawn placed on its first rank can singlestep or capture normally. Any pawn on its second rank can doublestep. A rook dropped at a/h-1/8 can castle. Pawns promote normally, and retain their rank when captured.

Several other versions of this idea differ mainly in restrictions on drops. In Neo-Chess (independently invented by Randolph in 1972), pawns promote by being exchanged for pieces from the opponent's reserve (a pawn moved to the eighth rank when the opponent has no pieces in reserve is immobile for the rest of the game); no unit may be dropped on the eighth rank (the last rule was dropped in a later version called Mad Mate). The commercial sets for Randolph's Neo-Chess/Mad Mate have round, double-sided pieces (with orthodox symbols) which are flipped over (as in reversi) to show the capturing player's color (shogi pieces are uncolored pentagons which point in the direction of the opponent to show which player they belong to. Dekle's Chessgi improves defense in standard chessgi by prohibiting all drops giving check (or alternatively using dragon horses instead of bishops -- adding the wazir move to their normal power); pawns promote only to counselors (non-royal kings, useful for defense) and revert to pawns when captured (see also [232, 340]). Robert Bruce earlier proposed a game [121] with restrictions similar to shogi -- pawns cannot be dropped to give mate, pawns cannot be dropped on their eighth rank, and promoted pieces revert to pawns when captured. Chessgi has also been combined with Scottish C [538]. Tandem C is a chessgi variant which resembles Double Bughouse (Cy4), but needs only a single set and two players.

Two variants, using chips to 'pay' for reentered units, have been devised to allow players more options in managing reserves and planning attacks. In Token C, the capturing player receives chips (according to the usual values P=1, N/B=3, R=5, Q=9) for capturing a unit. At the start of any future turn a player holding chips may trade the corresponding number of chips for a unit of his choice (it need not be one captured earlier). The player then takes his usual turn, either reentering a unit as in chessgi (but not the one he just 'bought') or moving a unit already on the board. In Bankhouse C, each player starts the game with 25 tokens. Captured units join the captor's force as usual; a player may reenter a unit on a vacant corresponding first rank square (e.g. White may enter a converted knight at b1 or g1) by paying the opponent the required number of chips (values as above). In addition, a player may ransom a lost unit (from the opponent's reserve to his own) at the same cost, paying a second time when he re-enters it. Any number of units may be ransomed on one turn, but at most one may be re-entered on the same turn.

Conversion C is a co-chess (Cu1) in which enemy units on co-squares are converted to friendly units of the same type; friendly units are unaffected (but see [201]). A threat to convert the enemy king is check, analogous to ordinary check. Orthodox captures and checks are also permitted. Cohen suggests that orthodox (replacement) capture be allowed by pawns only (see also Co-Capture).

The idea of conversion might be combined with other variants, especially those using non-replacement capture. It is possible, for example, to imagine Rifle Conversion, in which units 'shot' by rifle capture become friendly units (in order to make this playable, a player may not reconvert a unit which her opponent converted on the previous half-move). Similar to this is Turncoat C, in which any friendly unit attacked by the opponent at the start and end of a turn changes (at the end of that turn) into an enemy unit (e.g. 1 e4 e5 2 Qh5 g6 (Black pawn at h7 becomes White)).

When ordinary replacement capture is used, however, the capture square is occupied by the captor, and something must be done with the converted unit (multiple occupancy is possible, but the same rule as above, forbidding immediate recaptures on the same square, is needed). In two variants described in JENO, the converted unit is immediately moved elsewhere. We will use the name Conversion Circe for Tressau's variant, in which the converted unit is placed on the appropriate starting square if vacant (as in the problem Circe convention in Cv2). Boyer proposed a variant in which the captor immediately relocates the converted unit to any vacant square (bishop on the same color it was captured on; pawns not on the eighth rank); we will call this Conversion Bughouse."

I should clarify that this is a reprint from journal Chess Variants, which contains much information about both the games and the communities of players, inventors, and historians. This is hard to come by these days. Of course the Fergus Duniho site is the most authoritative for fans of chess variants. But as far as crazy&bug is concerned, only basic information without details.

This is a classical scheme of variants related to Crazyhouse that were created between the first half of the 19th century and the late 2010s. It does not include many other hybrids.

Unknow game is ancestor of Bughouse only presumably, there is no reliable study of his origin yet, as I mentioned before, the oldest Bughouse rules date back to 1947.

There are no other hybrids in this scheme - variations of Bughouse described in Variant Chess magazine and Pritchard’s Encyclopedia of Chess Variants and some other crazyhouse prototypes, Pocket Knight, experimental versions of Tiszta Bolondokháza and LaoTzu Chess and others from schemingmind.com, hybrid Mad Elephant Chessgi.

The time of Crazy Shack invention is unknown to me.

I also did not add pychess.org variants - Capahouse, Capahouse 960, S-House, Grandhouse and liantichess.herokuapp.com - Coffeehouse, Antihouse and their sub-variants in hybrid along with 960.

The same goes for judochess.com (shizmoo - tempestchess - judochess) where there was in 2000s Crazyhouse Judo, his I did not add to genealogy, but I added Four Way Crazyhouse and Bughouse Judo.

Fisher Random Bughouse existed in mid 2000s at chess.sipay.ru. Currently there is onlinea.4smart.eu where you can play.

I would have had to add too many other parents for different hybrids. In addition there is another reason - some of the variants could only be theoretical and we do not even know if they were played at all for example variations bughouse with a 3x7 board and etc.

I've seen a lot description of other different variations with elements of crazyhouse and a more complete classification may look like 1... 2... 1.1... 1.1.1... 1.1.2... 2.1... etc. or it could be an extensive family tree where crazy variants will be marked with a certain color and the other parents will remain transparent.

On reddit and elsewhere, people are constantly coming up with new variants chess.

Crazyhouse No Retreat Morphy Chess

https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/crazyhouse-no-retreat-morphy-chess

Crazy Elephant

https://www.schemingmind.com/home/knowledgebase.aspx?article_id=114

https://www.aurochs.org/aurlog/2010/09/10/crazy-elephant-chess-variant/

Mad Elephant Chessgi (a sub-variant of Mad Elephant Chess)

www.chessvariants.com/diffmove.dir/mad-elephant.html#:~:text=In%20Mad%20Elephant%20Chess%20a,line%20in%20front%20of%20it.

Kriegspiel Bughouse

"Kriegspiel Bughouse, invented at the New Cincinnati Chess Club, is played by four players, two against two. Each player can see his teammate's board but not the opponents'. The players move in rotation; passes are legal but the player who passed first must play after eight consecutive passes. Captured units are passed to the teammate as in Double Bughouse (Cy4). move away from the disappearance square."

Bughouse judo chess (?)

I do not know when it was first implemented by the creators of judochess.com and at the time of writing this chapter the site is not working, he has ceased to exist at the beginning of 2021.

One of my main arguments about the ancient origin of the captured drop rule is that it is the most fundamental idea and it can come to any person, any child learning to play chess.

comments

Proto Crazy

2019-12-13T14:53:38Z

This is the last chapter. We found the answer as close as possible.

I have not been in Discord for 2.5 years - since the summer of 2017.

I found this correspondence - my friend from the UK informed me once about this discussion. We thought then that no references could be found.

This is some kind of surreal story. And if you consider that the description is really a fact.

In this discussion, one of the players reports that he was able to find in an old German book:

Granach 03.10.2019

Okei i was just looking into this following book yesterday - there is a game mentioned called "Doppelschach" (german for Double Chess) and a few variants of that games seem to be described - the first one (paragraph on the picture) describes a game played with "normal" board and pieces "but the captured pieces" can be used in one's own "army" then....

unfortunatley it is written not even with latin alphabet but in an old font called "sütterlin" (commonly often known as "old-german"-writing) which makes it super-hard to read....

the book is from 1840 - and the author mentioned that the variant i was talking about was introduced 1821!!!

https://books.google.de/books?id=n64UAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=de&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Google Books

Das schachspiel

Not sure about how similar it actually is to zh or even bug (since it can be played with bigger boards too) because i haven t read it further so far....

Okei 03.10.2019

I've seen this book and I thought doubles chess was something different but I need to look more closely. Thanks for the reminder.

Granach 03.10.2019

Your welcome :thumbsup:

Okei 03.10.2019

Pritchard says something about crazyhouse in 18xx but I don't know how he knew ...I will look more closely

Granach 03.10.2019

I will read it more closely and fully too... (sometimes, haha, because as mentioned, it is more like decyphering than reading, not really fun, more like work ;-))

Okei 03.10.2019

I think I sent the link to Obi who is from Germany asking him to decipher some months back

But he didn't look yet

Granach 03.10.2019

Probably he has the same "not really fun" - issue with it, haha :wink:

Okei 03.10.2019

Pieces captured can be used in your own army... This is great... I really misunderstood

I thought it was just played on a double board

Granach 03.10.2019

It is so nicely written in an ooold style (seems all more about war than chess).. the exact words are more like ... "the captured piece can be taken and be used (according to his abilities) in ones own army to defeat the enemy" .... with an addition of "following certain rules" referring to the "can be used in ones own army" but without any explanation what those "certain rules" might be... maybe later in the text...

i just sent the PDF to my office and will print it out next week - i got curious now and like that i can handle it way better and make notes within the text etc... i will let you know what i find...

haha.. just from "browsing" it quick... there are several "4-player-chess-variants mentioned too that are called "Bierschach" ... probably they played it exclusively in pubs :wink:

(Bierschach=beerchess)

Okei 03.10.2019

Lol cool... Yea I will try to dig this up on my computer also. My German is weak chess

Ed Trice 03.10.2019

Crazyhouse blitz games OTB are non-existent :slight_smile:

Kocbftn 03.10.2019

i wouldnt be surprised if most of the variants played with the orthochess set have been though of and played before than was recorded, they just never spread out of the club or meetup where they originated, people playing for fun will want to change up the game sometimes

Ed Trice 03.10.2019

I don't know what you mean.

Okei 03.10.2019

Not true gothic, as I was saying in #crazyhouse there was an OTB tournament in London in 1980 organised by GM Raymond Keene and won by Chandler, then an IM, now a GM. But yes, this is the only recorded event ever.

Daydreamer 03.10.2019

and what about atrophied vs john barthmelow

also recorded one

just for fun though

Ed Trice 03.10.2019

okei was that a blitz event? Any footage? That would be funny I would imagine :slight_smile:

Okei 03.10.2019

i don't know unfortunately

no footage but notation of some of the games

they were bad of course as no-one knew the game

He gives a fragment of evidence.

More fragments of correspondence provided to me by Granach:

Granach 10/10/2019

okei ...i started to read "Das Schachspiel", it is awesome. I am not into historical chess literature, so maybe it is not that amazing as it appears to me... but there isn t even a a-h,1-8 Notation, haha

White Pieces have Capital letters , black noncapitals and every square is numbered from 1-64... for example this would be the notation of a Kings Gambit accepted (B,b=Bauer=pawn):

1. B 53 37 b 13 29

2. B 54 38 b 29 38 :B

:notlikethis:

more about variants later, it is the Last Part of the book but now i want to read all, so interesting what was Up to Date theory 1840, haha...

okei not Sure If the Ping worked above, i am on mobile, stupid "Keyboard"/autocorrection

ProgramMMichael 10/10/2019

Now it did :thumbsup:

okei 10/10/2019

Ok cool. So the early edition of Pritchard said that some version of chess where captured men can be placed dates back at least as far as 1827 but then in the more recent edition of Pritchard this sentence was deleted along with other revisions. So not sure if deleted because he changed his mind and not enough evidence or because just left out.

Granach 10/10/2019

we will see, probably going to Finish this within the day, luckily i have nothing to do but waiting for some Phone calls...

Granach 10/10/2019

OK, next chapters are dealing with a Lot of variants with additional pieces with different move Options (Like Hawk, eleephant ect.. but a Lot more, one for example "Courier" chess has Just additional Bishops (Läufer in German, which means Runner, thats why Courier i guess) with restricted capabilieties (move is limeted to 2 squares) on various Boards Up to 10x10... i ll skip the Details for now... and skip to the "Doppelschachspiel"

...Board, pieces and their moves are the same (as in Standard chess) but the captured pieces can be used again "to beat the enemy (!, lol)" The author mentions also that this Variant First Had been describes in the third Volume of "Archiv der Spiele" (Archive of Games) which was published in 1821 :-o

They played it with one Set of chess pieces but drilled a little hole in the top to Tag them with black or White Marks... :open_mouth:

okei 10/10/2019

Oh wow

Granach 10/10/2019

oops but wait, now the additional rules... it is Not zh yet...

-the captured piece has to be Put in the Board right away or the Option ist gone for the whole game

oh wow... and the captured piece has to be Put on its starting Position (Bishop can choose if c1 or f1), If that is Not possible, See rule above... :-(

exception is the Q, can be Put on d1 or e1, If both Not possible, she stays Out of the Game as describes above...

okei 10/10/2019

Do you have a page no.

Granach 10/10/2019

it is on pages 80 and following in the book

okei 10/10/2019

I also found "Archiv der Spiele" in google books. Full name - "Archiv der Spiele oder fortlaufende Beschreibung aller Spiele der Vorwelt und Mitwelt" Berlin, 1821

My German is average and I make out the words in this book. And still, I understood little, looking at the funny old rules.

Granach:

"Page 38 is "Doppelschach" (as far as i can see there is nothing new there... the same rules/facts as mentioned in the other book, maybe just nice because this mention is a bit earlier!

The other interesting variants/games are mentioned in "Das Schachspiel" too.

Btw... i would translate "Doppelschach" as Doublechess - which is a bit tricky because nowadays some people call bughouse double chess, haha... i think the name comes from the double use as black and white for the pieces, has nothing to do with players . and tandem.chess somehow sounds as if two ppl were playing too or two boards are beeing played or something like that...

If you are interested i can translate passages or sum up chapters of other variants for you but not this year anymore, too much to do :-)

But "Doppelschach" is really the one and only early form of crazyhouse... i read about the other variants and they are more about introducing other pieces / like 4 bishops each in the Courier game iirc or changing boards to other sizes or 4-Player chess...."

It is important for us that he managed to find what something. And maybe one day he will give a more detailed comment. From this, we can understand that Crazyhouse was a collective invention.

You could even say that Crazyhouse invented chess Anonymous.

I think that we got to the border and then only the unknown time, we are fans like everyone else in the community.

What else can you find? It will be a search everywhere. And something like Earliest Occurrences of Chess Terms.

I think that there are still people with some facts. I once wrote Fergus Duniho author chessvariants.com but he did not answer. Interestingly, in an interview for their site, David Pritchard says:

"I live in a bungalow in a small wood some 60 kms south-west of London. Half my working life I spent flying (military/civil) and half in Intelligence (which tend to recruit game players). I am married to Elaine Sanders, an international woman chess master, who played for England (BCF) in four chess olympiads and was team captain in two of them (Medellin and Buenos Aires). Our five grandchildren are keen players and critics of board-games (but not chess!)...

...Do you often play chess variants?

Only a few from time to time. I have played quite a lot of Hostage Chess recently."

comments

Bug Division

2019-11-23T01:58:46Z

I accidentally found Gnejs at the end of 2018 and entered into correspondence with him. I managed to get a series of short answers, but this was not enough for the interview. The Gnejs later returned to the community and Nick Long interviewed him for new site. I advertised Nick's new site for chess.com and reddit.

It is interesting to people today.

I must say that the historical thebugboard.net is still available in the web archive.

This is a document of the events of the first half of the 2000s. Recent forum topic updates in 2007.

The discussion is very similar to my own questions that arising from me prompted me in my research.

The discussions old school: "Bughouse Rating Bureau for OTB", "First Bughouse Tournaments", "Bronstein - experience", "Who is the best bugger (16yrs. and under)", "The strongest teams in history and present", "Future of bughouse (Tandem Chess)", "Bughouse hiSTORY" etc.

All this is imbued with the humor of the players, which is especially distinguishing our community.

A picture and a legend from a 1960s comic.This is a picture from bughouse.info

It somehow also occurred to me such a thought and this coincidence surprised and amused me:

"I first played bughouse while in college back in the early 1970s. It seemed to be most popular with chess players who also liked to smoke pot, and, I have to admit, bughouse and marijuana did seem to go well together. (I don't know exactly why. They just do.)
This leads me to think that bughouse started in the late 1960s, as many have speculated. The original buggers were probably chess players who were also part ot the extensive 1960s drug sub-culture. The reason no one can put an exact date as to when it was invented is because the first players were all too stoned to remember playing."

Well-known players created their personal pages in the early era. We can find small fragments of this. Other things are in some private collections, or you need to have money to get access to them. Part of the early history described by Fabrice Liardet raises the idea of the existence of early bases ICC - it is the inaccessibility of these bases that gives rise to the legends of how Bobby Fisher played on ICC.

This is the archeology of the internet. Is there for example somewhere an interview with Anders Ebenfelt

These old pages are facts that as in the case of Crazyhouse, the previous generation of players asked the same questions each other that modern players have. Nowadays, chess.com seeks to support the Bug scene, but its implementation still needs to be debugged. Discussions on the forum have few participants. If they ever organize an international online bughouse tournament this will be an event.

The earliest mention of a bughouse chess in history is "The New Complete Hoyle: An Encyclopedia of Rules, Procedure, Manners and Strategy of Games Played with Cards, Dice, Counters, Boards, Words, and Numbers" Richard L. Frey, David McKay, 1947

And as I mentioned in another chapter " Second History of the House"- Replacement Chess.

I think my research is no longer ongoing. As far back as 2018, i and my friend from the UK found the last links from David Pritchard's encyclopedia to L. Tressan "Das schachspiel:seine gattungen und abarten".

This is a book written in old-german and published in 1840. Two people from Germany did not answer - is there something would was anything about “crazy chess” in this book.

comments

Correspondence Fragments

2019-11-05T19:58:34Z

From the correspondence of chuckmoulton:

"In the early days of bughouse -- pre- Internet bughouse -- in every major city there were a few players who were unbeatable and thought they were the best in the world. WhoAmI in the LA area thought he was the best in the world. Bob Dodge and Wes Ward in the Philadelphia area played since the late 80's and thought they were the best in the world. etc.

A few people who believed they were the best in the world wrote books on bughouse, which turned out to be awful books because they were actually not very good. I think there have been around 6 bughouse books written. I have at least 4 of them... maybe 5."

Parsing my last year’s collection of links, I came across an interesting fact - «In 1929, then-world champion José Raúl Capablanca gave a demonstration of ‘Double Chess’ – this chess variant is now often referred to as ‘bughouse’.»

Maybe this is the answer?

I also recalled how I accidentally stumbled upon a discussion of one of Alekhine’s games. I can not find the link. In the discussion, participants discuss that Alekhine’s game is similar to Bug. He plays in opening as if waiting for a piece.This is a game of the 30s after a trip to Japan. They also discuss whether it is possible to find Japanese newspapers of this period.

We know that Alekhine loved chess variants, Alekhine played Marseillais chess.

The Archive of David Pritchard is in the Musée Suisse du Jeu and maybe you can find something in it.

From the correspondence of Chucklemagne:

"I wouldn't say they are counter-culture, I would call both bughouse and crazyhouse a heavily-overlapping subculture... Never liked the idea of imitating another player's style. I always figured it would lead to unremarkable play. If you pave your own way, you learn more about the game than mimicking someone else. It's like researching someone else's research. It is a limiting factor in thought.... Not much money means no professional players or scholarly study, yet. In time, I believe it will become more of a scholarly game if interest in it increases to the point of reaching critical mass for sponsorship and serious play."

In the history of Bug, there is a significant question of how game spread. In the 50-60th years he was known in Argentina and Canada, Europe and Australia.Tournaments in the Netherlands have been held since at least 1974.

All this looks like puzzles of an unknown story. In the discussion Reddit they informed me that the game was played in the USSR. But finding even photos seems impossible.

From the correspondence of Chucklemagne:

"Going to be hard to be comprehensive on that kind of request...

Sac-sitter: player whose only skill is in sacrificing pieces and depending upon their partner for material to sustain an attack. 1. e4 e5 2. Bc4 Nc6 3. Bxf7, then white stops moving and asks for a couple of knights, a bishop, and preferably a queen.

The HATE: frustration that builds between partners due to unexpected incompetence by at least one member.

Mutual Mate: two players playing the same color are simultaneously mated.

Winquit: Insisting on stopping a series following a win, usually following string of losses.

HATEquit: a partnership that terminates due to the HATE.

Heavy: Queen or Rook.

Diag/diagonal: bishop or pawn

Dupe: Second account

Simul: one player plays both boards at once.

Blinders: only looking at your own board, instead of both boards. A form of tunnel vision.

Finger Focking: dominating an opponent (named after the command "Finger Fock", which means retrieving information for bughouse player "Fock")

Stonewall: Dropping pieces near the king to avoid being mated.

Feed: Capturing pieces to improve partner's position.

Pardopp: Partner's opponent

Sit: Stop moving

Go: Start moving

I tell you go: Stop moving until I tell you to move.

Hard: response to a piece request indicating that compliance is difficult or impossible ("rook mates me." "Hard" means that an opponent can either immediately or soon capture a rook. "rook mates him." "Hard" means that there is no rook that is available for capture).

Easy: a weak opponent

Contact check: a non-knight check that cannot be blocked because the attacking piece is adjacent to the king.

Kingwalk: making many king moves in a few moves.

Touchdown: king reaching eighth rank, often done either following a kingwalk or as a method for humiliation

Safe: unable to be mated.

Outcheck: getting the king to a position where an opponent may not check again. Often followed by a counterattack.

Gathering: a meeting of bughouse players.

Up time: you have more time left than your partner's opponent.

Grand Prix: Bughouse tournament format based on individual performance, not partnership performance.

High/low: stronger partner plays weaker partner (in a case where there are two teams with 2500/1800 ratings, the 2500 players play the 1800 players)

High/high: stronger partner plays stronger partner."

Asking these questions in correspondence, I certainly knew that Anders Ebenfelt created his glossary in the 1990s.

"Bughouse is the evolutionary product of chess analogous to that the alphabet is developed from simple drawing. / Ebenfelt - note"

It is interesting that in different countries the name seems to indicate the country of origin. As if Bug brought to Portugal from Australia, and to Russia from Sweden.

And one day I will have to leave only a list of links to an attempt at this story.

comments

Ice in the Fire Zone

2019-11-03T09:05:45Z

After Crazyhouse appeared on lichess in 2016, the most competitive gaming scene in the world gradually emerged there. Groups of old FICS players came along with many new fans. In the era of chess sites played directly in the browser, the community acquired a real sporting spirit.

A crazy player or a bugger - he waits days and weeks, keeping attention. The first years of the game are insane, and discipline matters. Chess education plays a significant role in the player's background. And two or three years of the game is enough to reach the 2000+ rating in ZH. But there are many weak chess players who once left entirely in Crazyhouse or Bug. Sometimes it gives birth to original styles.

Classic players are stronger in defense. While strong crazy will tend to attack, the classics will act like a boa. We know that super grandmasters will be strong in the game. We also know that they will have to find out what crazyhouse effect. Caruana could not rise above 2600 and studying his games, I saw how he loses interest and is quickly destroyed.

Fun Art by opperwezen

In an article about the most popular computer game in history the author very precisely indicates the psychology of the game.

This is a good point about the controversial "waste of time" and psychological dependence on the game. This is well known in the history of chess and is especially relevant for online chess. I think online chess is more “pure”, free from social environment.

Bobby Fisher said that he did not believe in psychology, although his story is one of the brightest psychological cases. Chess on the Internet gives rise to another psychology. That which leads to hidden dissatisfaction in classical chess is absolutely hyperbolized in chess variants.

In the world Crazyhouse there are historically many strange, vain, gloomy and toxic players. They open and close their accounts as they evolve. Sometimes they slow down, sometimes they turn into some kind of personality. It started yet FICS and sometimes you can find the history of manipulation of that time.

JannLee in his only interview said well "the fire" what is born in Crazyhouse and creates a crazy brain.

comments

Quest for Memories

2018-11-12T03:41:17Z

The word "Bughouse" appeared in the US in the 1880s and literally means a psychiatric clinic. This is a slang word. It also has similar concepts - turmoil, madhouse, mental hospital. This is not the own name of the game.

Magazine Chess Variants published by Pritchard and like-minded people represents often other editions of articles about chess variants.

We can not talk about "history" Bughouse chess - there are some facts. We will look for it, but we will find the same information. Their source - "The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants" by David Pritchard

I am aware of the existence of two Bughouse newsletters.

I found a mention of the New England Double Bughouse Chess in the Chess Periodicals: An Annotated International Bibliography, 1836–2008 page 305

New England Double Bughouse Chess Association Journal (19??–1973?)

It was published by Stephen Dann. My friend from U.K gave him my questions. I was interested in what was in his newsletter. I also asked questions about how widespread this game was. And how it was perceived.

He reported that his journal was never digitized.

«Every chess variant does help promote the Royal Game. Few of my chess blogs, publications or 40 years of Sunday chess columns have been digitized.»

He said he played at Northeastern University in Boston 1969-74. He also answered the question about the popularity and perception of the game.

«It was a foolish pastime we did between classes and during activity periods in college. We played on 2-4 boards, single bughouse was too boring as it was all about weird tactics in team 5-minute chess. You won material from weaker players and you attacked f2 and f7 and then there were waitouts. You wreaked a lot of clocks and sets, and we used paper boards. Amateur players beat masters who had weak team members. I really don't know what was so much fun other than you could say anything you wished to say as long as it was related to chess. Rules on pawn promotions were completely weird. Bishops were only good to sac on the long diagonal and you tried to promote to Bishops so you could get 4-5 of the same color so you could get an express train going to keep your opponent in check or threaten a smothered mate. Just winning pawns was enough to end most games. Winning knights ended most games quickly, and like most speed, losers would have to get up.»

Most people who played the bug in the 60s say something like that. The history of the game in the United States is the history of American campuses.

One of the earliest mentions of the game in «The Alumnus» 1970 University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

We all know that Bughouse is game-trap.This is his concept. I think the game had fans and opponents.
Its mass distribution in America - starting from school. But at the same time, unlike silly casual entertainment, the game is not documented anywhere.

Photo from The Hatter 1995 – Stetson University, Yearbook

The second bulletin Bughouse published in the 90s Jerry Graham. He has his own blog.

He said that had distributed all copies of his newsletter.

According to him «…the first bughouse rating system in the US was started by two players from the New York City area, Kantor and Cullen. I operated the rating system for several years in the 90s.One milestone in American bughouse was when the Kaissa digital clocks first came out, and Wesley Ward and Robert Dodge of Philadelphia pioneered the now common timing strategies. Myself and my friend Ron Young also won several bughouse tournaments around then, including the Amateur Team East. From those times on, Philadelphia and Atlanta Georgia players have been some of the dominant ones.»

Of course, we are talking about what happened before the Internet.

Write game history online tried Anders Ebenfelt.

This is a rare and valuable document of the time.

But the very first mention of the game occurred even before the publication of the first books of Pritchard.

A simple search in Google books gives a link to the book «The official blue book and encyclopedia of chess» Kenneth Harkness 1956

It is strange that the creators of the article on Wikipedia did not find this.

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Second History of the House

2018-09-20T04:18:24Z

The last secret of Crazyhouse is the name of its creator.

We must say the inventors of chess variants - a special group of people in the world of chess.

In our time, you can theoretically come up with any variants. There are templates and models, there are computers. There is an experience of predecessors. But will there be beauty in it.

What makes the variants meaningful. It can be beauty or math. In the case of Crazyhouse, I call it the "Crazyhouse effect". What makes you come back. And at the same time what can persecute you. What is familiar to every crazy player.

Not all inventors of chess variants remain in history. King Gustav probably wanted to stay in history.

I started playing variants first in Zillion's shell. A little later I was delighted with the work of V.R.Parton and Ralph Betza.

I also tried to learn little-known facts from history in these endless archives –

http://history.chess.free.fr/library.htm

http://www.chessarch.com/archive/articles.shtml

And not all sites from this list are now available -

http://www.schackportalen.nu/English/eblandat.htm

The history of the variants is scattered in different languages. But one of the best sources is of course the Pritchard Encyclopaedia. This is the historical games Crazyhouse –

Alex Randolph - David Pritchard (date unknown)

If you believe the archive Eteroscacco this game was published in the late 90's

Although the name of the inventor Crazyhouse is mentioned in the Encyclopedia.

I have not heard from any of the famous or leading players the name of the inventor.

I asked my question, including people dedicated to the game 15-20 and even more years.

I mentioned this in my first chapter - the best players did not know anything about the origin of the game. I had extensive correspondence and I can not name all the names. Players, journalists, programmers. Many are known.

It was including people involved in the history of chess on the Internet. And people studying chess variants. And also active members of the community Crazyhouse.

In the correspondence, my friends went to the famous chess journalist GM Raymond Keene.

He indicated the name of Alex Randolph.

As evidence, I received a link to the interview -

http://www.aresgames.eu/16037

with the Italian game designer Leo Colovini. He also worked in collaboration with Randolph.

Randolph is an incredibly interesting person in the history of chess inventors. From the mid-60's he lived in Japan where he was given dan in shogi. Later he moved to Venice.

During the Second World War, he passed some training in a group of cryptographers –

http://brettboard.dk/lib/talks/alex7.htm

I managed to find in the archives a biography of Randolph.

http://thebiggamehunter.com/inventors/game-designers/alex-randolph/

http://ludotonica.com/archivos/502

https://web.archive.org/web/20120501211347/https://zuspieler.de/das-leben-des-alex-randolph/

And also a reference to his only official biography published in German.

I thought that we found the answer to the last question. Randolph originally called the game Mad Mate and therefore early information on it can be found using the early names of the game. Few of his contemporaries in Europe or the US could also compete with him in shogi.

But what I noticed was that Randolph also created games under a pseudonym. And I thought at first that he might not want to stay in history. But soon I was convinced that it is not so – http://brettboard.dk/lib/talks/alex9.htm

Randolph thought about copyright protection. And although he belongs to the authorship of dozens of games, I soon realized that it was not he who was the inventor Crazyhouse. To begin with, let's return to the Pritchard Encyclopedia - we are interested in Chapter 5

We see that several variants of the same game were originally described. Changes in the rules apply to pawns - in some versions. These changes are not essential. Because initially the game could only happen OTB. These could be sets for board games. Or two sets of regular chess.

What Randolph invented is called Mad Mate and his game dates back to 1972. While the identical game was called Ralph Betza Chessgi back in 1964.

Later in 1997, Randolph patented a board game Mad Mate. Randolph also founded his own game development company in the 90s.

Pay attention also to another fact – «They classified this last one as a "non-Chess game", and other games they played in this category included Checkers and Go.». This club in the US probably played in Crazyhouse from the mid-60's.

P.Novak(GB)-A.Castelli(ITA) 1st Heterochess Olympiad

M. Chandler - A. Whitely (1980)

I came to the conclusion that the game itself was invented before the 60's. Its origin can be in the 19th century. See subchapter 5.4 in the Encyclopedia on article Replacement Chess.It's about a similar variant - (and the version of its name Madhouse Chess!) the dates of its history go back to the 1930s.

A game can have multiple authors at once and the claims of authorship themselves could give some clues. Knowing the history of chess, you understand that the very idea of chess crazy is fundamental enough. Shogi are known at least from the VIII century.

The history of chess is the history of hybrids. Each element requires skill - a cube, a clock or pieces. By studying the variants you can see what you can see for the first time.

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New Crazy Worlds

2018-08-07T06:22:31Z

We can create a classification of crazy chess as a family of games. Or as a tree of variants. I will list the canonical games. All of them were created before the relatively wide popularity of Crazyhouse.

Bughouse – most popular variant that has a history of open tournaments. Bug is generally an ideal conceptual variant. This is conceptualism. Higher league is the same as the top world chess players or virtuosos of art.

Many world chess players are fans of Bug - Susan Polgar, Levon Aronian,Yasser Seirawan, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, John Nunn. In 2018 for the first time in his life Garry Kasparov played Bughouse.

Thanks to the development of the Internet in the early 2000s a whole generation of strong players emerged Bughouse-online FICS. A couple of years ago there was an interesting discussion Reddit. It should also be noted that in such discussions, players from completely different generations are compared. Some of them are legends OTB. Others are the strongest players FICS.

We will try to understand the story Bughouse in another chapter. In the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s there was a sufficient amount of resources Bug.

Nowadays site Neph Diaz has a very rare collection of newspaper publications, photographs and videos OTB Bughouse in USA. Neph Diaz multiple champion of open tournaments. On his website you can also find links to one of the oldest video recordings of live tournaments Bug.

Neph Diaz together with Kazim Gulamali (VABORIS), who was considered the best Bug player in the world in 2000, they were experts on Bughouse for uschess.org. A small number of games played by Kazim Gulamali posted in 2011 for iChess.net

In 2016 the Bug was implemented on chess.com but so far it is not as stable in the technical part as in FICS.

Several factors at once, including the First World Championships Crazyhouse-2016 served as an impetus to the development of stream-channels Crazyhouse&Bughouse - JannLeeCrazyhouse, Nikolas Theiss, Thomas Crosky, helmsknight

Now chess.com is the largest popular platform of the Bug of our time. It becomes a good taste.

However, for fans there is also bughousetest something like a double clone from the very lichess for implementation Bug.

A lot of GMs also often take part in the game - there are different opinions about the mutual influence and the difference between Bug and regular chess.

Crazyhouse 960 - second canonical extension. He appears right away together with Fischer's chess as a conceptual continuation.

It could be played on the Internet after 2017 on hellochess and chessvariants.training

Many people express the idea that the future of crazy chess is behind this option. In the spring of 2018 JannLee started playing Crazyhouse960

Also for the first time in history was played JannLee & TwelveTeen versus TheWorld

It should be noted this incredible game where the two best players of the world were confronted by the collective brain of more than 12 experienced crazy players ...

TwelveTeen known for FICS cheesybread is a member of the elite of masters and is the main competitor for the title of world champion Crazyhouse.

Hostage Chess - you can play in the software from the site of chess hostages. In this game, there are all the elements of zh and a set of complications with the failure of the exchange.

Around this variant was a definite discussion, until for a while the philosopher John Leslie continued to publish his games.

I must say that John Leslie has a parable about a man who remained unscathed after the execution. He was shot by fifty soldiers. I do not know whether it is possible to perceive it in the context of crazy chess. But it looks tempting.

Dark Crazy House– variant appeared no later than 2004 for www.schemingmind.com it can be played in correspondence.

«This is just about as outrageous a game as you can get whilst still being considered a chess variant. As far as we are aware it is unique to SchemingMind.com (Surely there isn't anyone else out there mad enough to try it!)

Your opponent's pieces are invisible (see Dark1) and start in normal chess positions. However, the playing rules are those of CrazyHouse (see CrazyHouse) so they can be dropped invisibly back on the board whilst you're least expecting it!

For those who really like to be kept in the dark about what your opponent is up to, this game's for you.»

This site also invented such crazy options as Dark Crazy House 2 and Crazy Elephant with elements of Shatranj.

Four Way Crazyhouse – the variant was invented on the website of Kung-fu Chess in the 2000s. He used elements of chess kung fu - the current for each part of the delay. As I know, he was never played in his original crazy version.

CrazyWar – variant from the game program Zillions-Of-Games

About this game posted a report in 2005 - «is normal Crazyhouse with extra pieces»

In Zillions, you can set up a network game - I must say that CrazyWar can be the next level of difficulty for crazy players.

Crazy No Retreat Morphy Chess – another variant from the shell of Zillions-Of-Games.

Invented in 2006.

Fullhouse - the original version of the game is available at http://www.chessvariants.com/invention/full-house and also as Unachess (Full House Chess II)

Under the same name was invented by opperwezen in 2017 for hellochess with other ideas. After each move, your pieces bifurcated like in Japanese horror films. It was possible to create a fake king.

In chessvariants.com you can also find the idea of CrazyhouseKriegspiel ("CrazyKrieg") posted in 2003.

Fisher Random Bughouse – this option existed on the Internet at some point. This idea originated right after the invention of Fischer's chess and she has frequent discussions.

We also should not forget about the existence of WinBoard / Xboard with their huge capabilities. Of course, there are thousands of ideas for the development of crazy chess. In any variant, an element is added zh. There are ideas of chess variants, even with the possibility of self-devouring, the destruction of their own parts for further use in the attack.

Sometimes it's kung fu, sometimes a vision, tactical or strategic elements, power solutions. These worlds can change your perception, your psychology, you can expand your consciousness and go your own way in reality

And appreciate my old joke – exist crazyhouse.com

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First History of the House

2018-07-21T04:17:45Z

The history of Crazyhouse is still a mystery, trying to find traces of the game, in the past we have too little evidence. All that we know is the influence of Japanese chess shogi. In most countries, the game can be known as a random variation, but it is not widely used. Bughouse is a popular option in many countries, but its exact origin is unknown.

We do not know anything about the first players of Crazyhouse. With the advent of the Internet, the game was reborn - we collected a lot of materials on game theory, engine programming and the search for effective training systems.

We call it zh - it happened from the old legendary server, it was the team in the console to find the game.

"The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants" by David Pritchard game has different names

Ralph Betz is the inventor of many chess variants. We can consider him the author of the title of the game. A link to Prichard can also be found in the article about Chessgi

In the sixties, Bughouse appears and, as you might say, we can find references to the Double Bughouse chess in the 70s.

Publications in the press are very rare - the only publication I know of is the article by Nick Long in 2002 in Chess Life (the USCF magazine publication).

On his website, Nick Long tells the story of Crazyhouse's appearance on the Internet, this is of great interest. Separately, he tells the story of Internet chess, the history of long-disappeared servers.

"Prior to MEWIS-2, there wasn't an automated way to play crazyhouse on an ICS server. You could play an odd game of bughouse with each player logging into the ICS twice, or actually using a strange chess engine that was designed to allow crazyhouse play on unrated games by simply setting up a position where each player on the other board would immediately give to the player what they had just captured on their board. Unfortunately, the names of such engines have been lost to time (or at least as far as my memory serves me). Another option would have been to use the bsetup option, which is rather clunky and only works as untimed games.

MEWIS-2 was the first chess server to offer online play of crazyhouse chess, and this feature was offered in the spring of 1998."

MEWIS-2 is the Mid-East Wild Internet Server 2 (MEWIS). The new generation will find it hard to believe this. But the resource was "more popular", collecting 20-30 players online.

You will not find this in web archives. Part of the history of Crazyhouse can restore people.

Screenshot of the missing Russian site, which was Fischer Random Bughouse

After the first chess server in history, Crazyhouse had less fame than Bughouse. People accidentally came to the option. The game has not been studied yet, she did not have a theory. This could be the application of ideas from the first books about Bughouse in the 1990s.

The heyday of the game began in the late 90's after the appearance of the option for ICC called Wild 23

https://web.archive.org/web/19990501121939/http://www.chessclub.com/help/crazyhouse

Andre Nilsson known as Gnejs remained a legend for the first generation of players.

This name was also used later Andre Nilsson from Sweden for FICS. It was also one of the first theorists of Bughouse, who was a commentator for the work "TOP TEN WAYS, TELLING YOU TO BE A BAD PARTNER"

In ICC, you can find the highest ratings of Crazyhouse & Bughouse in server history.

From the letter of the world champion Crazyhouse JannLee (tantheman) -

"I started in 2000 - there were not many of us playing so there was not much history, we generally made it up as time went on.

I'm aware of shogi and that it has some rules similar to crazyhouse, but have not studied it or sought transfer of any knowledge from that game."

This is the first generation of players known to us. At the same time, FICS became the source of the world's largest scene in the style of Bughouse. Levon Aronian played in Bughouse on FICS. Other FICS players take part in open tournaments in Europe.

The history of regional servers can be found in the article Nick - history zh is also connected with the history of atomic chess.

Nick, the position of himself one of the oldest atomic players, describes this as "Death Knell of the Small Servers"

In the 2000s, you can play on other resources - US Chess Live and Buho21

Pminear is one of the leaders of that time

In every game from the past, we study ideas

But the first generation of FICS - JKiller, pminear, Gnejs, WhoAmI, Dragonslayr, tantheman, Bugzilla, Cren, CDay, Tecumseh, YScorpion, RubberDuck, FireFly, VABORIS, GusMcClain, Intoxicated, Supergrover, beuki, Foxbat, Chessti, volcano, Terrapin. They were both players and creators of the first computer engines Crazyhouse and gaming bases.

The base of FICS games begins in 2008. Finding early games is extremely difficult - there are no archives, except for some private collections.

The Crazyhouse remained in the shadow of Bughouse for a long time. Between them there are many differences - grandmasters can play zh and will be annoyed by ideas Bug. And there are just as many pederasts who do not accept "more chess" games. This is a good example of a postmodern vision. The reason for the abnormal character for many players is even more anomalous and "wrong". In this sense, the origin of the word "bugger" is interesting.

Sometimes it resembles a chess counterculture.

No one else can do what you do.

To date, several books have been published about Bughouse. You can try to understand the philosophy of Crazyhouse in an interview with JannLee in 2016 -

"Strategically it’s the same – I’m not aiming for an edge in the opening, but rather avoiding being worse, while hopefully putting my opponent in unknown territory. If that takes me into unknown territory as well, then all the better. I’m not a great fan of theory and study – my preference is to enjoy playing the game on the board with a pure clash of talent, rather than outside the board with prior knowledge."

Crazy props are well studied in articles crosky, as well as in what are called "tricks" in the circle of players. Many of them are recognizable intuitively, the main crazy combinations. This is a separate "theory of chaos."

You can open the book anyway. Classification of debuts at the initial stage - reviews of the group by known lines. Many players have their own research.

The new birth of Crazyhouse in 2016 occurred on lichess.org and chess.com, where Bughouse was also implemented. One of the strongest crazy players in the world and the commentator of the game for chess.com is Grandmaster Yassir Seirawan.

One of the best world players mastertan presents Light & Dark in his work: visual guide to Crazyhouse own unique system.

We can also thank chess.com for the opportunity to see an understanding of such outstanding players as Hikaru Nakamura.

Crazyhouse becomes a place of strength.

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