What is bughouse? I’m sure many of you have watched the hit show “Game of Thrones”, or have at least heard about nobility systems. Much like House Targaryen or a royal house, bughouse is the nobility of the bug kingdom. They exist in almost every different species and variant of bug, and they usually include bugs such as queens of beehives, queens of ant colonies, daddy longlegs, and others. Bughouses are the true ruling class among bugs, the “upper 1%” so to speak. Ultimately, bugs don’t live in a meritocracy, so their power is unfounded (they have no true distinguishing features from a normal sample of the same species), undeserved, and often abused. Bughouses are akin to the reason why the Revolutionary War was fought, and I hope to shed more light on this severe issue in the following post.
Kidding. While I’m sure that would’ve made an interesting article, I’m actually going to discuss one of my favorite recreational activities: playing bughouse. I know some of you are asking What’s bughouse? Bugs and houses or some odd combination of the two? I can assure you that it’s not. The bizarrely named game is a variant on classical chess, only this time with four players and two teams. The rules are as follows.
1. Two players pair up to make a team, and there are two boards on which they will play on. The teams will face off across from each other like this. One player on each team will play the white pieces, and their partner will play the black pieces.
2. The normal rules of chess apply. The pieces move in the same manner, the goal is to checkmate or capture the enemy king, and it’s played with a clock on the side. Standard time control for bughouse is 2 mins, no delay.
3. When capturing one of your board opponents pieces, you toss them over to your partner. They can then place that piece anywhere on the board, and it becomes part of their game.
4. If either partnership gets checkmated or loses on their board, their team will lose as well.
In essence, it’s two player chess. It’s not just enjoyed by amateurs and children who play for fun, however, bughouse is a way to relax for even the top chess players in the world. Bughouse is loved by everyone in the chess world, myself no exception, because of its fast paced games and the thrill of making impossible plays. While real chess is boring, calculative, and long-winded, bughouse is quick, and the hope of rescuing a lost position with pieces delivered by your partner always feels like a miracle.
Bughouse is so addictive, in fact, that it’s taken over the chess club culture at Naperville North. For the last two years, Ajay Balaraman and Abid Anwar have placed 2nd in the Nationals Bughouse Tournament, ranking across the nation. Together, we created a company called “Naperville Bughouse Academy”, which offers bughouse lessons to the surrounding community. Looking further into it, this LLC was the first of its kind in the United States, and we were the first company to offer bughouse lessons (not to flex though). You can view our website here.
I guess in the end, bughouse doesn’t really have anything to do with bugs or houses, but chess instead. Bughouse is actually slang for a mental hospital, which, with the crazy and chaotic playstyle that bughouse uses, can be what it looks like from the outside. This game is insanely fun and offers diversity in life, and I highly encourage you all to try it. You can find bughouse online at Chess.com, or just find 3 other people who want to play as well. If you feel confident you’re always welcome to play with me, but think of me more as a queen bee than a regular worker ant ;).
For more on bughouse, feel free to read this article by the WSJ.