Hello and welcome to my bughouse guide.
Let me start of by giving my general mindset of the game in relation to my partners.
I am one a few players who play with an equal desire to help my partner win as I do to win my own board. (The strategies I use for this will be in the concepts). It doesn't matter one bit to me who mates, a win is a win. Because of my style my partner has opportunities to play way above his level and win games vs much stronger players, often to the disbelief of my opponents. Fun times :)
It's incredibly important to take responsibility for the team's results. There's no "my partner played bad and I crushed". You win and lose as a team. Sometimes frustration happens, but it's so much easier it is to play well if you're focused on what you can do instead of whether your partner is playing good enough.
Partners are so dependent on each other. If your partner loses, there's nearly always something you could have done better and vice versa. Even if they made silly mistakes, I try my best to realise it's not always their fault if they lose and try and adjust my game to help them win.
Let's get into the concepts now.
1) Speed:
In a bughouse game, the clocks dictate whether you can sit and wait for a piece, or are forced to move.
Being up time on your partner's opponent is especially useful when a piece mates either your or your partner's opponent. As an example, let's say you need a knight to mate, and are up 15 seconds. Assuming your partner is not getting mated and not a selfish imbecile your partner will:
A: Try and force a knight before the lost time is made up. Won't be 100% successful, but the key factor that many bug players overlook is:
B: Even if he's unable to force a knight, it's still a good situation for your team. This is because his opponent will have to make moves he would not normally make to save his knight, often resulting in loss of material or position. So even though you did not mate, you gained something out of your time advantage.
The traditional reason to play fast is to be up on time vs your opp, but this is not so important in bughouse. Almost always the reason to play fast is to be ahead in time of your opponent's partner (diagonal from you).
Before you start premoving all your moves, remember that speed rarely amounts to anything unless you have good communication with your partner!
2) Communication:
Bughouse players should always be looking for what pieces could possibly help themselves and the good ones often watch their partner's board to see what pieces he may need as well.
Many players play mindlessly too fast in order to stay up on time. However, in doing this they are missing opportunities to capitalise being up on time in the first place! The key is to slow down when you have a opportunity (window) to capitalise on your time advantage.
Make sure you use the "Sit" command often!
Especially for beginning to intermediate level player, "sit" should be used very often if you are up or even on time. Flipping the roles around, if you were Black you would definitely want your partner to sit so white does not get that bishop. It's better to error on the side of saying Sit too much than too little, and sometimes I say it as many as 10 times a game just to avoid some nuances.
3) Move quality:
Gradually improving your position (building up an attack or winning material) while keeping your own king safe is the definition of move quality. This is the most important concept of bughouse. Speed will do nothing for you if both of your moves are bad and you can never get any good positions. As you chess players already know, always be thinking of what your move does and how your opponent will respond to it.
As you start playing more you'll realize there are a ton of patterns in Bughouse which occur all the time, you just need to get experience on how to deal with them.
I'd like to put some exercises here later on finding the best move.
4) Material:
In bughouse, the pieces on the board and the pieces you are holding to drop dictate the game. The more material you have, the greater the chance of checkmating your opponent's king.
What is often overlooked is that If you win material the effect is doubled. BOTH you and your partner will have an advantage in the material category.
Therefore sacrificing pieces is generally NOT a good idea, unless you can plan ahead on how to attack your opponent. The most common mistake many players make is to sacrifice on f7 early. Granted, 10-15 years ago this used to be thought of as a devastating idea that leads to a quick kill.
However, nowadays the game has evolved and people have learned how to effectively communicate and easily defend after winning the bishop. For instance many beginners sacrifice on f7 in the following position as white away in the following position, THEN they ask for pieces after black takes on f7. Let's look what's happening here, because the results are worse than you may think.
#1 losing double material (for both you and your partner)
#2 Losing time (waiting for pieces) You're going to need a knight and a queen to mate, and that ain't happening.
#3 Hurting your partner's move quality (he will be so worried about getting you pieces that he will be playing fast and making sub optimal moves).
As long as you have effective communication you have nothing to worry about when accepting a sacrifice on f7. My team generally dominates when someone uses the sac-sit style on me and people rarely try it against me anymore :(. I just love eating free pieces.
Material scale in bughouse: Of course, there is no exact material scale for bughouse, as it's all dependent on the position.
Previously bughouse players published an article that said P=1, B=N=R=2, Q=4.
That's pretty accurate, but in the majority of cases especially in high-level games, bishops and rooks are slightly stronger than knights.
What? Bishops better than knights? Is nearly everyone's reaction when I tell them.
The reason is becauase as beginners we're inclined to think knights are better because they are paramount to early mating attacks. However as you improve and early sacs become less effective, bishops are just slightly > knights. This is because of their unique ability to be effective in attack and defense at the same time.
I'd say 2 pieces are slightly better than a queen.
I would even argue that 2 pawns are slightly better than a knight.
I'm a material freak myself. I love to eat sacs and defend. There are very few players who overemphasize material,but they do exist. Sometimes I try and hold onto my material too long when sometimes it is correct to give back some material in order to to keep your king safe. This leads the final key to winning bughouse games.
5) Timing
Now that you've mastered the 4 basic concepts of bughouse: Speed, Communication, Move quality, and Material.
You play as fast as you can without diminishing your move quality. You communicate so well with your partner that I'd take the over on 100 ptells a game.
Your opponent is under attack and you didn't even sac a single piece.
This section of timing is used for advanced players. Here are some examples:
Knowing when to spare that +N tell that wins a pawn to your partner because you realize he's in trouble and it's not worth him sacrificing his position to get you that knight.
Glancing at your partner's board and knowing that he will die soon, even though he didn't actually say "I'm dead" yet. Here I would play very fast and start taking tons of risks in order to try and create the best possible chances of winning. Not sitting a game down to a time scramble when you have mate with a piece and up 2 seconds since both you and your partner are winning anyway. It'd be silly to risk a loss due to lag or slowness.
Glancing at your partner's board and seeing that he's starting an attack, so you start playing faster the next couple moves in order to try to get him pieces even BEFORE the players on your board were notified by your partners.
Here you can watch my games
Have fun.
Let me start of by giving my general mindset of the game in relation to my partners.
I am one a few players who play with an equal desire to help my partner win as I do to win my own board. (The strategies I use for this will be in the concepts). It doesn't matter one bit to me who mates, a win is a win. Because of my style my partner has opportunities to play way above his level and win games vs much stronger players, often to the disbelief of my opponents. Fun times :)
It's incredibly important to take responsibility for the team's results. There's no "my partner played bad and I crushed". You win and lose as a team. Sometimes frustration happens, but it's so much easier it is to play well if you're focused on what you can do instead of whether your partner is playing good enough.
Partners are so dependent on each other. If your partner loses, there's nearly always something you could have done better and vice versa. Even if they made silly mistakes, I try my best to realise it's not always their fault if they lose and try and adjust my game to help them win.
Let's get into the concepts now.
1) Speed:
In a bughouse game, the clocks dictate whether you can sit and wait for a piece, or are forced to move.
Being up time on your partner's opponent is especially useful when a piece mates either your or your partner's opponent. As an example, let's say you need a knight to mate, and are up 15 seconds. Assuming your partner is not getting mated and not a selfish imbecile your partner will:
A: Try and force a knight before the lost time is made up. Won't be 100% successful, but the key factor that many bug players overlook is:
B: Even if he's unable to force a knight, it's still a good situation for your team. This is because his opponent will have to make moves he would not normally make to save his knight, often resulting in loss of material or position. So even though you did not mate, you gained something out of your time advantage.
The traditional reason to play fast is to be up on time vs your opp, but this is not so important in bughouse. Almost always the reason to play fast is to be ahead in time of your opponent's partner (diagonal from you).
Before you start premoving all your moves, remember that speed rarely amounts to anything unless you have good communication with your partner!
2) Communication:
Bughouse players should always be looking for what pieces could possibly help themselves and the good ones often watch their partner's board to see what pieces he may need as well.
Many players play mindlessly too fast in order to stay up on time. However, in doing this they are missing opportunities to capitalise being up on time in the first place! The key is to slow down when you have a opportunity (window) to capitalise on your time advantage.
Make sure you use the "Sit" command often!
Especially for beginning to intermediate level player, "sit" should be used very often if you are up or even on time. Flipping the roles around, if you were Black you would definitely want your partner to sit so white does not get that bishop. It's better to error on the side of saying Sit too much than too little, and sometimes I say it as many as 10 times a game just to avoid some nuances.
3) Move quality:
Gradually improving your position (building up an attack or winning material) while keeping your own king safe is the definition of move quality. This is the most important concept of bughouse. Speed will do nothing for you if both of your moves are bad and you can never get any good positions. As you chess players already know, always be thinking of what your move does and how your opponent will respond to it.
As you start playing more you'll realize there are a ton of patterns in Bughouse which occur all the time, you just need to get experience on how to deal with them.
I'd like to put some exercises here later on finding the best move.
4) Material:
In bughouse, the pieces on the board and the pieces you are holding to drop dictate the game. The more material you have, the greater the chance of checkmating your opponent's king.
What is often overlooked is that If you win material the effect is doubled. BOTH you and your partner will have an advantage in the material category.
Therefore sacrificing pieces is generally NOT a good idea, unless you can plan ahead on how to attack your opponent. The most common mistake many players make is to sacrifice on f7 early. Granted, 10-15 years ago this used to be thought of as a devastating idea that leads to a quick kill.
However, nowadays the game has evolved and people have learned how to effectively communicate and easily defend after winning the bishop. For instance many beginners sacrifice on f7 in the following position as white away in the following position, THEN they ask for pieces after black takes on f7. Let's look what's happening here, because the results are worse than you may think.
#1 losing double material (for both you and your partner)
#2 Losing time (waiting for pieces) You're going to need a knight and a queen to mate, and that ain't happening.
#3 Hurting your partner's move quality (he will be so worried about getting you pieces that he will be playing fast and making sub optimal moves).
As long as you have effective communication you have nothing to worry about when accepting a sacrifice on f7. My team generally dominates when someone uses the sac-sit style on me and people rarely try it against me anymore :(. I just love eating free pieces.
Material scale in bughouse: Of course, there is no exact material scale for bughouse, as it's all dependent on the position.
Previously bughouse players published an article that said P=1, B=N=R=2, Q=4.
That's pretty accurate, but in the majority of cases especially in high-level games, bishops and rooks are slightly stronger than knights.
What? Bishops better than knights? Is nearly everyone's reaction when I tell them.
The reason is becauase as beginners we're inclined to think knights are better because they are paramount to early mating attacks. However as you improve and early sacs become less effective, bishops are just slightly > knights. This is because of their unique ability to be effective in attack and defense at the same time.
I'd say 2 pieces are slightly better than a queen.
I would even argue that 2 pawns are slightly better than a knight.
I'm a material freak myself. I love to eat sacs and defend. There are very few players who overemphasize material,but they do exist. Sometimes I try and hold onto my material too long when sometimes it is correct to give back some material in order to to keep your king safe. This leads the final key to winning bughouse games.
5) Timing
Now that you've mastered the 4 basic concepts of bughouse: Speed, Communication, Move quality, and Material.
You play as fast as you can without diminishing your move quality. You communicate so well with your partner that I'd take the over on 100 ptells a game.
Your opponent is under attack and you didn't even sac a single piece.
This section of timing is used for advanced players. Here are some examples:
Knowing when to spare that +N tell that wins a pawn to your partner because you realize he's in trouble and it's not worth him sacrificing his position to get you that knight.
Glancing at your partner's board and knowing that he will die soon, even though he didn't actually say "I'm dead" yet. Here I would play very fast and start taking tons of risks in order to try and create the best possible chances of winning. Not sitting a game down to a time scramble when you have mate with a piece and up 2 seconds since both you and your partner are winning anyway. It'd be silly to risk a loss due to lag or slowness.
Glancing at your partner's board and seeing that he's starting an attack, so you start playing faster the next couple moves in order to try to get him pieces even BEFORE the players on your board were notified by your partners.
Here you can watch my games
Have fun.
Hi, i am a chess coach myself and think that bughouse isn't really good for your chess.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to improve visit www.improveinchess.wordpress.com