I played bughouse in the early 90s. It’s far better than chess. My teammate and I were really good. We would beat chess grandmasters because the game is so different. At the time we had bughouse Elos of something like 2300, which don’t make any sense because it was such a niche game.
When you get good at bughouse, you make your own openings and you each know who’s playing what. The openings are synchronized and you can plan out until a certain move where you sacrifice a bishop or knight on the opponents king bishop pawn, exposing them, then your teammate just trades as much material as possible.
We also got really really good at the clocks. We’d just have a winning position and sit on the clock on the other board in a zugzwang-like time force.
That game, and kriegspiel, occupied my time in much of the 90s. If you like chess, and can play in person, try bughouse. It’s the best.
dgunay 37 minutes ago [-]
This reminds me of my mental journey playing League of Legends for a really long time.
It's a 5v5 team game and very famous for its toxic community. What MOBA isn't? Anyway a regular experience as a LoL player is being in a steady state, or maybe even ahead of the other team, only to have your position trashed because one of your teammates keeps making repeated mistakes.
The first couple years I played, this would make me super mad. Exactly what the author felt in online games of Bughouse. Sometimes I would get mad at people I knew IRL, which I'm pretty ashamed of. Putting in a lot of effort and still losing feels bad. I never had this feeling when I would get absolutely crushed in 1v1 fighting games because ultimately I was fully responsible for every loss.
After a while though, I kind of stopped getting upset about losses in LoL. Maybe part of a broader mindset shift, or I just recognized that the only productive thing to do is try your best, do not self-identify as "someone who wins", and extract as much value from a loss as you can. In the long run, you win more and more games that way.
Eventually I stopped playing entirely, for other reasons, but that's also a valid approach. IME most people (including myself) who play games like this a lot and experience Bughouse Rage usually have an unhealthy amount of their self-worth wrapped up in the game.
anonymous908213 2 hours ago [-]
This is, I suppose, off-topic from the main premise of the article.
I've never heard of Crazyhouse before, but the drop rule is clearly inspired by Shogi (sometimes colloquially referred to in English as "Japanese Chess"). Shogi is very good. I find it to be much more enjoyable than Chess. I would suggest giving it a try if you prefer Crazyhouse to normal Chess.
gebdev 2 hours ago [-]
This article is really well written. I like how it defines a new concept (bughouse chess), then uses it to help describe an emotion they’ve been feeling wrt more popular culture.
I also think bughouse seems cool (aside from the issues mentioned), and want to give it a shot now. Probably in-person.
akoboldfrying 1 hours ago [-]
This piece sets out to investigate a type of rage the author feels to be universal -- namely, impatience with the competence level of others who you presume to be "on your side". But to me, this rage is first and foremost just a personality trait that I don't like very much in myself or others. To his credit, he does give something of an antidote in the section on "symmetrizability" -- but I don't think this is particularly novel. Surely most people have ingrained this as a habit by adulthood?
The author analyses many sides of this rage, but misses an obvious one: Perhaps, if you already know that you don't enjoy playing a joint game with someone who turns out to be insufficiently competent by your standards, and experience tells you that things often do turn out this way, then you should spend less time playing a game like Bughouse with strangers online. I realise Bughouse is only intended to be an example that applies to other situations -- but even in those other situations, opting out often is an option, and sometimes it's the right one.
(I won't be playing Bughouse because it sounds like the most stressful thing I can imagine, possibly after being an air traffic controller.)
Rendered at 06:34:13 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
When you get good at bughouse, you make your own openings and you each know who’s playing what. The openings are synchronized and you can plan out until a certain move where you sacrifice a bishop or knight on the opponents king bishop pawn, exposing them, then your teammate just trades as much material as possible.
We also got really really good at the clocks. We’d just have a winning position and sit on the clock on the other board in a zugzwang-like time force.
That game, and kriegspiel, occupied my time in much of the 90s. If you like chess, and can play in person, try bughouse. It’s the best.
It's a 5v5 team game and very famous for its toxic community. What MOBA isn't? Anyway a regular experience as a LoL player is being in a steady state, or maybe even ahead of the other team, only to have your position trashed because one of your teammates keeps making repeated mistakes.
The first couple years I played, this would make me super mad. Exactly what the author felt in online games of Bughouse. Sometimes I would get mad at people I knew IRL, which I'm pretty ashamed of. Putting in a lot of effort and still losing feels bad. I never had this feeling when I would get absolutely crushed in 1v1 fighting games because ultimately I was fully responsible for every loss.
After a while though, I kind of stopped getting upset about losses in LoL. Maybe part of a broader mindset shift, or I just recognized that the only productive thing to do is try your best, do not self-identify as "someone who wins", and extract as much value from a loss as you can. In the long run, you win more and more games that way.
Eventually I stopped playing entirely, for other reasons, but that's also a valid approach. IME most people (including myself) who play games like this a lot and experience Bughouse Rage usually have an unhealthy amount of their self-worth wrapped up in the game.
I've never heard of Crazyhouse before, but the drop rule is clearly inspired by Shogi (sometimes colloquially referred to in English as "Japanese Chess"). Shogi is very good. I find it to be much more enjoyable than Chess. I would suggest giving it a try if you prefer Crazyhouse to normal Chess.
I also think bughouse seems cool (aside from the issues mentioned), and want to give it a shot now. Probably in-person.
The author analyses many sides of this rage, but misses an obvious one: Perhaps, if you already know that you don't enjoy playing a joint game with someone who turns out to be insufficiently competent by your standards, and experience tells you that things often do turn out this way, then you should spend less time playing a game like Bughouse with strangers online. I realise Bughouse is only intended to be an example that applies to other situations -- but even in those other situations, opting out often is an option, and sometimes it's the right one.
(I won't be playing Bughouse because it sounds like the most stressful thing I can imagine, possibly after being an air traffic controller.)