Hey,

Are there any bughouse players out there? I've played it a few times but I always seem to miss crushing drops. I never got really into it.

Does it have staying power like classical chess? Is it more or less difficult? Is it more or less dominated by computers? What's the learning curve like? Are there any live (real money) tournaments?

Oh, and one specific question: why do people have individual bughouse ratings? Shouldn't two-man teams have a single rating?

Thanks for humoring me.

It's a different game to classical chess not just because of the drops and the team aspect, but because of time. Time management is useful in chess: in bughouse it is everything. Very often there occurs a situation where you need a particular piece (say, a knight) and if you get it you will be winning on your board, otherwise losing. If you are up on time you can "sit" and see if your partner can get it for you. If you are down on time and you sit your partner's opponent will likely also sit, because you are down on time you will have to move first.

Chess is incredibly complex because of the sheer number of different positions that can arise. Bughouse is less complex in this way imo: there are very few deep strategic ideas and most of the games will revolve around an all out attack on one or more of the four kings. It makes up for this complexity somewhat by the value of communication and teamwork. But no one would ever write a book on a bughouse opening variation, for example, unlike the thousands of similar chess books that exist.

It isn't dominated by computers at all: as far as I can see there aren't any active bughouse engines on FICS. Though there are some engines that have been programmed to play it they are usually modifications of chess engines and don't "see" the other board.

It's great fun to play, especially live and especially with other players of around the same skill level, but you can be the **** live and get destroyed by weak online players. (I play occasionally live and am usually the best player or close, then I went to play online a month ago and lost 20 games in a row.) The learning curve is tough at the bottom online, you will spend most of your time getting berated by your partner. Occasionally there is a bughouse tournament as a side event at a chess festival, never for real money afaik.

Why do the chess servers use individual ratings for bughouse? Lots of good reasons. The software was designed for individual ratings. People would need to play a lot more games to get an accurate rating if they kept switching partners. And individual ratings are very meaningful: the playing strength of a team does correspond roughly to the average rating of the players, so long as there isn't a huge rating discrepancy where a 2200 can basically partner a 1100 and play both boards.

there are some cool bughouse resources on the net though many of them are maybe out of date.

Try the tactics problems linked to on this page, some of them are actually quite beautiful compositions.