
The parable of Bug House. The world's toughest chess variation. - waratuman
http://www.humbledmba.com/the-parable-of-bug-house-the-worlds-hardest-v
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jballanc
I know that chess is probably the most traditional "thinking" game to play in
the western world, but when I read this line:

> _I think there may be a lot of neat similarities to chess and
> entrepreneurship, but ultimately chess is too controlled._

...I felt compelled to mention Go. In general, Go is much less constrained
than Chess. The strategy plays on many axes: not only offense vs defense (as
chess) but also territory guarding vs invasion, speed vs strength, and risk-
taking vs conservative-waiting. In general, I would say Go has many more
parallels with business (and life in general). I've recently been turning my
passing interest in Go into a full-blown obsession, and I would highly
recommend it to anyone looking for an alternative to Chess.

~~~
jaf12duke
OP here. I love GO. For those that haven't played, it's the game showed
briefly in a beautiful mind. Where Nash, the rational mind, can't figure out
how he could have lost...and exclaims 'The game is flawed'

It's Othello squared. It's a fabulous game. It's intuitive, instead of
rational. I lived in Japan for a year after college and played every year.
It's hard to find people in the states that play and it takes a long time to
play. The old saying goes, 'Two men sat down for a game of Go. That was
yesterday'

If anyone plays Go and is in San Francisco, hit me up by email--would love to
play!

~~~
jballanc
You might try checking out the Dragon Go Server:
<http://www.dragongoserver.net/>

As opposed to the live-play servers, Dragon Go is intended for a much more
measured pace of play (the FAQ claims the average player makes 4 moves per
game per week). As an added bonus, there's also an iPhone app. It's definitely
not the same as playing in person, but it's currently how I get my fix.

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icco
Man, I played this back in high school when I was on the chess team. It
promotes such a different level of thought than normal chess, but when you get
a teammate who literally starts taking pieces so you can place them and vice-
versa, it gets insane.

I think the real benefit of this game is that it teaches you to read chess
boards quickly. If you get good, you can glance at your opponents board and
get a quick idea of things you can do in a few moves to help them.

~~~
DiabloD3
I came here to say exactly this. Bughouse is crazy fun when you have a
teammate who is brutal.

I wonder why no one has implemented Bughouse as a massively popular webapp,
I'd love to play that again.

Edit: Huh, apparently Bughouse is still 1v1, the 2v2 variant is called
Crazyhouse. We never called it that back then, weird.

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koopajah
According to wikipedia ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazyhouse>) Crazyhouse
is a 1v1 version of Bughouse. They say 2 players opposed to 4 players, not 2
players by team.

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karamazov
This is quite similar to Shogi, a Japanese variant of chess where you can put
down any of your opponent's captured pieces. From what I know, that game is
highly strategic; since all of your potential pieces come directly from your
opponent, it's probably less chaotic than this variant.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shogi>

~~~
gcp
The two player variant of Bughouse is called Crazyhouse. You can play it on
the chess servers (freechess.org, chessclub.com etc).

There are also some chess engines that can do it, including the one in Mac OS
X, though I don't know if Apple's GUI offers access to it.

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kooshball
This game has been around for a while. We used to play in my chess club after
people got bored at a practice session or fooling around waiting for the next
tournament game. It's a fun game to play but it's much more difficult to plan
ahead when your opponent can drop any piece on you anywhere. I found that it
didnt really promote the deep rational thinking that comes naturally with
chess and is fundamentally different.

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pilom
Just a clarification on the rules. You can't place all pieces "anywhere on the
board." Pawns can't be placed in the first or last rows so no illegal
placements and no instant promotion.

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wanorris
Can you place a piece to put someone in check?

It's been at least a couple of decades since I've played bug house, so my
memories are pretty hazy.

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kooshball
>Can you place a piece to put someone in check?

Yes you can. Very often the game ends when a player uses a new piece to
checkmate.

More details here <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bughouse_chess>

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noonespecial
Also fun is the version where pieces "respawn". There are 6 respawn points.
Every minute, a dice is rolled and the piece captured earliest (of all
captured pieces) is placed at the respawn point indicated by the dice
(knocking off any piece that happens to be there, of course).

There are no stalemates in this version.

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teyc
My son plays it. But the way it was conveyed to me, it sounds like "The
Secret". The whole point is to learn to wish for pieces. If you wished loudly
enough, for example "I could checkmate if I had a pawn in my next move", then
it could magically appear out of no where.

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tseabrooks
Back in high school we played Bug House during lunch and at the end of chess
practice. This is easily some of the most fun that can be had with a chess
board.

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czzarr
you guys are all missing something: the money factor. This is why none of
these games will mirror startuping adequatly.

Poker, with its structural luck factor and money factor is by far the closest
match. I think the variant that best mirrors it is tournament poker, MTTs
especially. If you look at PNL graphs from MTT players, you will see they
mirror startup PNL very well.

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dfc
I think Fischer Random is much more challenging...

~~~
gcp
Based on what? Fischer Random is _exactly_ like normal chess in complexity,
and only cancels out the opening books.

Bughouse and crazyhouse are significantly more complex games (branching factor
over 100 for Crazyhouse, even more for bughouse).

~~~
dfc
Based on my own personal opinion and experiences? Fischer random creates a lot
of uncertainty in my mind when I play. Regardless of what obscure opening is
played in a traditional game I still have a sense of what spaces are likely to
be controlled by rooks, where I can anticipate a knight showing up and so
forth.

As far as your statement regarding branching factor increase can you point me
to some references? Its not that I do not believe you I'm curious at what
point the complexity begins to take off.

~~~
billforsternz
As a serious player with a reasonable amount of experience with both variants
I have to say I disagree with you profoundly on this. FischerRandom/Chess960
is just chess with a twist (familiar openings and opening setups aren't
available). Bughouse/Transfer is a completely different game that's based on
chess rules and conventions. It's major characteristic is a massive injection
of chaos that's quite foreign to the game of chess.

