Interesting bughouse article

[TexAg06]

This was a good read, thought y'all might be interested.

http://main.uschess.org/content/view/11764/671/

[Do it Right]

Interesting article. I tried and quit bughouse pretty quickly because of something he mentions in that article - the players are obsessive about very short time controls. 1 0 or 3 0 only, for the most part.

[wlrs]

It's because the mechanics of the game, the meaningful "time" is the time difference between teams, whoever is faster can afford to sit and wait for material (or stop material flow in order to defend on the other board). Longer time control would just lead to longer waits without an effect on the speed one has to play at - if as a team you are a lot slower than the other team, you're busted.

[AlbertoKnox]

Originally Posted by wlrs

It's because the mechanics of the game, the meaningful "time" is the time difference between teams, whoever is faster can afford to sit and wait for material (or stop material flow in order to defend on the other board). Longer time control would just lead to longer waits without an effect on the speed one has to play at - if as a team you are a lot slower than the other team, you're busted.

Why would the waits actually happen though? If you are behind on time you must move, might as well do it kind of soon.

I don't think it makes a good long game, but 5-30 minutes is reasonable.

edit: I must just be dumb because the best bug player in the world seems to confidently disagree.

[Neil S]

"Might as well do it kind of soon..." unless your partner moving will let your opponent's partner move, giving your opponent a mating drop.

[wlrs]

Originally Posted by AlbertoKnox

Why would the waits actually happen though? If you are behind on time you must move, might as well do it kind of soon.

I don't think it makes a good long game, but 5-30 minutes is reasonable.

edit: I must just be dumb because the best bug player in the world seems to confidently disagree.

When your team is doing bad on the board but just a little behind on the clock, sitting until there is just a few seconds left and only then getting moving can increase the winning chances by quite a lot. (and leads to some more decision making by the team up on the clock whether they should break the standstill before there is just seconds left).

[heltok]

is there any site where you can play bughouse 1v1 (2 boards each)?

[AlbertoKnox]

Originally Posted by Neil S

"Might as well do it kind of soon..." unless your partner moving will let your opponent's partner move, giving your opponent a mating drop.

If you have less time than your partners opponent you can't wait. They'll just wait also. That situation was all I meant. Is there a situation where it makes sense for both sides to wait? Maybe when time is close and both think they are better at blitz, lol.

[RoundTower]

Originally Posted by heltok

is there any site where you can play bughouse 1v1 (2 boards each)?

you can play on FICS, but only by logging in twice (once as a guest), unless anything has changed.

I've always thought you could make a decent 1 v 1 bughouse game as follows: I play my White move, you play your White, you play your Black, I play my Black, I play my White, .... and so on with normal bughouse rules. This could be played at standard or even correspondence time controls.

Of course it loses a lot of what makes bug fun, but it does add the possibility for much deeper combinations and analysis, like regular chess.

[Noir_Desir]

bughouse is more fun with mechanical clocks anyway.

[nullspace]

Originally Posted by wlrs

It's because the mechanics of the game, the meaningful "time" is the time difference between teams, whoever is faster can afford to sit and wait for material (or stop material flow in order to defend on the other board). Longer time control would just lead to longer waits without an effect on the speed one has to play at - if as a team you are a lot slower than the other team, you're busted.

I have never played bughouse and I'm not sure I quite understand this concept. Could someone illustrate with an example?

[YouKnowWho]

30 seconds  (black)      |   35 seconds (white)
mate in 3 forced to white|   mate in four forced to white.
40 seconds  (white)      |   35 seconds (black)

both guys with white will be sitting, and the guy who has 35 seconds will only start moving when their time ticks down to the last seconds, hoping that something happens in the mad time scramble.

Now imagine:

30 minutes (black)  |   39 minutes 45 seconds (white)
mate in 3 to white  |   mate in 3 to white
40 minutes (white)  |   31 minute 15seconds (black)

again, guy who is getting mated and has less time should sit, forcing the other guy to sit too. But now they both will have to sit for ~40minutes to get in that same time scramble situation.

edit: i just can't format this sh-it properly, hopefully it will be understandable.

edit2: it's not exactly what smilingbill was talking about, but still works as an argument for why longer time controls wouldn't be good for bug.

[RoundTower]

It's actually even more extreme than this.

In your example 5 seconds is plenty of time for White to play 4 moves and checkmate, so the player with less time should just resign.

This should make it clear that being 5 seconds behind can be fatal no matter how much time you have -- even 1 second can be. So from move 1, all four players will play as fast as possible even if they have an hour on the clocks, lest they fall behind on time.

[Uitje]

Anyone interested in setting up some games? Partners on FICS quit on me quickly once they find out how much of a noob I am, yet I would like to learn to play the game somewhat better, in order to be able to blitz the moves out faster. I think this just means playing way more games than I can ever imagine. Currently @ 14 something bug.