Last revised January, 2000 (changes to response in Gnejs comment #13; other minor changes)
Direct links to each section: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 Reader Responses
May,1998:
An e-mail from Gnejs with many
comments and strategy tips has been incorporated into this article. Within
the article you will see green "Gnejs dots". Clicking on a Gnejs dot will
take you to a comment from Gnejs about something you just read. Click on
the following Gnejs dot for more information:
This is an article focusing on team play in an interesting chess variant
called bughouse. In case you're wondering about my credentials for writing
this article (this being the Internet, the World's largest storehouse
of misinformation): no, I'm not a Bughouse God and will never be one.
What separates the Bughouse Gods from the rest of us are things that can't
be taught, like board sight and pattern recognition.
As for me, I don't
have the board sight and pattern recognition of a top player, but I think
I understand the dynamics of team play in bughouse as well as anybody.
I have a secondary reason for writing this article, and that is to try to make the bughouse arena a little more pleasant. If you've played some bughouse on the Internet, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about here. Okay, I realize most bughouse players will never get jobs as diplomats, but we can all try to be nicer. So, if as you are reading this article, the thought occurs to you that you might be a bit like one of these bad partners, maybe give a little thought to fine-tuning your approach to the game. Your partners will thank you, and you will play better bughouse.
You top players probably won't find anything in this article that you don't already know, although I suspect you'll skim it anyway to see what's in it. It may tick you off when you discover I'm giving away a few of your secrets in this article, but look at it this way: you'll still be better than the rest of us because you have those qualities that can't be taught, and the bughouse world may turn into a better place. Isn't it worth giving up a few secrets to bring peace to the valley?
Oh, just one note on the writing style in this document: I have opted to put grammatical correctness ahead of political correctness by using "he" rather than "they" when referring to a single person who could be either gender. Sentences like "If your partner is ahead on time, they should sit" are grammatically incorrect, plus they look illiterate to me. I'm pretty sure better than 95% of all bughouse players are male anyway, but, if you happen to be female (and I say this with the utmost respect), please don't bother to send me an e-mail telling me the article is sexist. Instead, just download the article and do some global changes on the pronouns (i.e. change "he" to "she", etc.) That will give you a document more to your liking.
This article is protected by the copyright laws as they pertain to
Internet publications, which I think means I own the rights to the article,
but, if you decide to download it and put it in your own publication,
there's not a whole lot I can do about it.
So, if you do decide to use the article for your own purposes, please
(a) tell me about it, and (b) send me a copy of the publication
where this article appears so I can see my name in print.
Maybe you've seen the movie "Little Shop of Horrors," which has been a produced a couple of times, originally as a cheapie horror movie, then turned into kind of a horror musical, with gospel music, that famous crooner Rick Moranis, and a funky carnivorous plant with a voice supplied by a member of the Four Tops. Personally, I think this is one of the most terrifying movies ever made, but I suppose this is due to my own personal phobia about being attacked by a man-eating plant (which probably goes back to that moment when, at the age of three, I got my head stuck in the knothole of a tree and thought the tree was eating me).
Oh, yeah, that's right: you're a bughouse player, you could less about movies or personal trauma, and, with that linear mind of yours, you'd like to know what the previous paragraph has to do with bughouse. Well, this is the analogy: the favorite line of some bughouse players comes straight from that movie. Like the plant in the movie, they ask you for a chunk of meat ("Feed me!"). If you can, you give them that chunk. Then they ask you for another chunk ("Feed me!"), and suddenly you realize you're playing the Rick Moranis role. It's a no-win situation for you. Typically, one of the following things happen:
What does a good partner do that this guy doesn't do?
Lots of things. For starters, a good player knows that, unless a forced mate
is involved, asking your partner to compromise his position to get you
a particular piece is a bad idea.
Even more importantly, a good player
knows sometimes it takes awhile for exchanges to happen, so
he makes moves to keep his advantage while waiting for some
material to finish off his opponent. I'll admit this is easier
said than done, but it's definitely one of the trademarks of the top
players. The best ones know how to play when they don't
have pieces to drop -- and they don't need an army off the board
to force mate.
In contrast to the greedy players who are always asking for stuff,
there are the players who appear to avoid communication altogether.
They don't ask you for anything, and they appear to ignore all
your requests, even the requests that would seem to have
devastating effect. For example, say you have a terrific threat
and send the message "pawn forces mate in 2". All your catatonic partner
has to do to end the game is take a pawn, any pawn, and sit. But,
unless a pawn capture is something he was planning to do anyway, forget
about seeing that pawn. You'll be sitting there on pins and needles, saying
to yourself, "Come on, man, take the frickin' pawn," nervously watching your
clock as you sit and wait. You'll watch as your partner makes
five or six moves, none of them pawn captures. Finally, the time will come
when you can't wait any longer, and you'll grit your teeth and play a move
that relinquishes the forced mate, a golden opportunity gone by.
Okay, maybe there's a reason these guys ignore you.
Like, maybe there have been too many times they gave a lousy partner
the piece he requested, the partner threw in one check by dropping
the piece, and that was the end of the attack. It's a situation that can
be particularly annoying -- it takes tremendous self-control not to write
back to the moron (um, change that to "tactically challenged player",
it's the 90's), "That's your whole attack? Why'd you want
that piece so badly, anyway?"
So, as for these players who appear to be ignoring their partners,
I can't say I condemn them, but it's still bad bughouse. If a player
claims he can force mate with a certain piece, at the very least his claim
should be checked out, an exercise that usually takes only a few seconds.
(These claims are generally easy to verify -- usually it's a snappy one-two
combination or a check to force the king into the middle of the board.)
If the player's claim is correct, then clearly his partner should make a
concerted effort to get the piece that will end matters.
It's a team game. To spend every game trying
to mate on your own board rather than making exchanges that would
greatly help your partner's game is, to be frank, arrogant and selfish.
Bugs Buggy fans will recognize the above line as coming from one of the cartoons where Bugs races a tortoise. In the cartoon, the tortoise blows Bugs' doors off, but then cartoons are, you know, surrealism. Bughouse players have to deal with the fact that they play their games in real life. In bughouse, as with most activities in real life, "slow and steady wins the race" isn't a plan that generally works. Never has, never will. Aesop was scamming you.
Allow me to go off on another tangent here. (<Chuckle> I'll be doing stuff like this to you through the whole article.) I'm in complete agreement with the contingent of chessplayers who think conventional chess is being ruined by the new time limits, which seem to get faster every year. It used to be, when your game got to a critical position, you could spend twenty or thirty minutes working out a combination or strategic plan as deep as your feeble mind could muster. Occasionally, you'd come up with something you were darn proud of, and you'd show the game to your friends, running them through every side-variation that you'd worked out in your head, showing your buddies how you'd seen everything. And, if your buddies weren't total losers, they'd be duly impressed, and, for a few moments at least, you were king of the hill.
Well, the chess of the short attention span 1990's has changed all that. Now it's "game in 30", i.e. get the games over with quickly so you can get the tournament done in one day and the TD can go home early. At game in 30, forget about trying anything creative, you can't look it over long enough to decide if it is a brilliant concept or another one of your insane hallucinations. Deep combinations are out of the question -- you're lucky if you can think more than two moves ahead. And do you think you'll have time to work out a Rubinstein-like endgame maneuver to tie down your opponent so that a pawn can push through to a glorious promotion? Don't make me laugh. When the time control is that fast, the key to conventional chess is no longer finding subtle moves to solve difficult problems, it's keeping your position intact and hoping your opponent does something horrendous.
So, yeah, you guys who like to play conventional chess by pouring yourself a brandy and mulling over your next move, I'm with you -- but don't play bughouse that way, it doesn't work. In bughouse, time is much more important than in regular chess. In regular chess, your only consideration when it comes to handling time is making the time control, and you can relax once you're sure you'll make it. In bughouse, you can never relax, you have to constantly strive to be ahead on the clock.
What do I mean by that phrase "ahead on the clock", you ask? That's a good question and brings up a key point, keep reading...
It's actually pretty easy to tell when you're ahead on the clock: just check the clock of your partner's opponent. If you have more time than your partner's opponent, you are ahead on the clock, and here's why that is good:
So, let's summarize this section with an example of a surefire recipe
for failure: Say you are in an open position, both kings with little
protection, both sides moving briskly. Your partner is in a closed
position, clogged with pieces, and he is moving s-l-o-w-l-y,
trying to find a way to break through that mess. He falls well behind
on his clock, then tries to break through by exchanging defenders.
You watch helplessly as your opponent starts dropping pieces all over the
place, and just like that you're dead. The fact is, it was the glacial
pace of your partner's play that lost that game, but he probably won't
realize that. More likely, he'll just think you're a chump for getting
mated. He'll play the next game at the same pace, and chances are the
game will end the same way. He'll do stuff like that to you through the
whole evening.
So, based on the comments in the previous section, is it possible to play too fast in this game? Well, sure, if it means your play is gonna reek...
There are plenty of bad partners out there who are at least smart enough to have picked up on that bread-and-butter plan of the top players: get ahead on the clock and start your attack; then, when you get to a position where a certain piece forces mate, stop moving and wait for your partner to get you that piece. They see how great that plan works when the 2300 players do it, so that's their plan: move fast! And, since they want you to know they have figured out the secret to success at bughouse, they will remind you to move fast! They will remind you of that constantly.
Oh, sure, you can't dispute the success those 2300 players have by moving quickly. There's just one little point here that maybe should be emphasized: they're 2300 players. They all have amazing board sight, and so they can move quickly without making obviously bad moves. These lesser players that try to emulate the quick play of the 2300 players, they are not in the same league, not even close. So what happens? When your partner makes like Speedy Gonzales, he will get ahead on the clock, to be sure, completing Phase One of the plan. However, he will make one or two or several bad moves and get in trouble early. With his king scampering around the board like a decapitated rooster, he will never attain a position where he can sit and wait for mating material. And as for that thirty second advantage he gained by blitzing the opening: watch how quickly it evaporates when he has to sit because the next move is mate.
"Wait a second," you may be saying, "can't Speedy tell his partner to avoid exchanges until the position is safe again? After all, that was the plan you said breaks the attacks of those 'Feed me' guys in section #1. This is the essentially the same situation, right?" No, this situation is quite different. The "feed me" guys start their attacks too early and can't sustain the attack without more material. The Speedy Gonzaleses, on the other hand, are usually stuck in a position where two or three enemy pieces are bivouacked close by their king and the Third Brigade is ready to move in. The situation is such that stalling tactics do not matter one whit.
The lesson to be learned here is: if your brain can't handle warp 9, slow
down just a tad. As a rule of thumb, follow the advice they give you when
you take an SAT test: work as fast as you can without sacrificing accuracy.
Yeah, I know that's more advice that's easier said than done, but if
you're hanging pieces left and right every game, then it's safe to say
that either you're trying to play too fast or you've had too many
beers that evening.
It's real easy to develop a love-hate attitude about this next group of bad players. On the plus side, there is a certain infectiousness about their enthusiasm -- they just love this game. Bughouse to them is like fireworks on the Fourth of July. They love the tactics, love the action, love the sacrifices -- especially the sacrifices.
Now, before we continue, it is worth thinking about what can be considered a sacrifice in bughouse, since the relative values of the pieces are definitely not the same as in regular chess. For example, an attack from long distance (using a queen, rook, or bishop) isn't quite as threatening in bughouse as in regular chess because the attacks can often be parried by interposing a dropped piece. So, the pieces that can attack from long distance aren't quite as valuable. Knights, on the other hand, with their ability to check the king without risking KxN, become more valuable tactically. Giving up a queen for two knights would be a pretty dramatic sacrifice in regular chess, but can hardly be considered a sacrifice in bughouse; conversely, if it costs you two knights to get your opponent's queen, you haven't really won any material.
I've read in other sources that no less an authority than Gnejs, known to
some as "the only true Bughouse God", valued the pieces this way: pawn = 1,
knight = rook = bishop = 2, queen = 4. In the original version of this
article, I commented that His Holiness might be blowing a bit of smoke
with this valuation, because it seemed to me that knights should be worth
a little more than bishops. However, Gnejs himself had something to
say on this point (click on the green dot to see his insightful comments:
)
and other strong players wrote to me with persuasive arguments on the
positive power of bishops. Now, I'd have still stuck to my guns on the
advantages of a knight vs. a bishop in hand, except (and here's where
the irony starts) the more bughouse I played on the Internet, the more
I started to realize that -- big surprise -- the gods were right.
I'll stick with my claim that queen + knight make for a more lethal
tandem than queen + bishop, but for all around versatility bishops
get the edge.
Aside from material and positional considerations, that all important
bughouse commodity called time should be assessed to decide if your side
is winning or losing. In fact, I don't think it is unreasonable to think
of a ten-second lead on your opponent's clock as a one-pawn advantage
(all other things being equal, of course).
To illustrate this point with a scenario: suppose you have a way
to win queen for knight with a knight drop, but you don't have a knight
in hand. So, you send the message "n wins q" to your partner.
He eventually gets you the knight, but, because you were sitting, you go
from being 15 seconds ahead on your clock to 15 seconds behind on your clock.
Who got the better end of that deal? My feeling is, your opponents did.
Okay, let's get back to talking about those lovable losers, the
sacrificial maniacs. To these players, no sacrifice is too great if the
sacrifice creates a marginal attack on the enemy king. Oh, sure, occasionally
the sacrificial orgy actually works and the opponent gets mated. (It'd
work more often if most of these hell-for-leather attackers weren't
tactically challenged -- sometimes these guys are so busy sacking pieces
they overlook mate in one.) And, when it does work, that's when this turns
into Greek Tragedy: he just won one. Brilliantly. Forget the five losses
that preceded this one, this win reaffirms his belief that he is a Bughouse
God. He'll play the next game -- every game -- with the same overzealousness,
oblivious to the fact that his attacks fail far more often than they
succeed. The percentages don't matter here: those occasional "brilliant"
wins are just too intoxicating.
Now let's talk about what's happening to you while your partner is jettisoning pieces with youthful abandon. You look across the board and notice your opponent has obtained an army of pieces off the board, while you've got squat. With no chance to mount an attack yourself, basically all you can do is meekly curl up in your shell and try to fend off the attack that you know will come eventually. If your partner's attack fails, you're dead, and, if your partner's attack succeeds, sometimes you're dead anyway. Here's a scenario to illustrate the latter point:
It's a typical sac-fest on the other board -- your partner goes straight for the attack in the opening, pitching his queen to draw his opponent's king out. A wild cat-and-mouse game ensues as your partner chases his opponent's king from pillar to post, sacking two more pieces en route. Finally, he has the king cornered, and he sends you the smug message, "he is mated next move! yesss!!!"
Well, your partner's opponent, wise to the importance of time in bughouse, did one smart thing: he moved quickly while he was under attack, and now he is 30 seconds ahead of you on the clock. You cringe as you survey your opponent's imposing army off the board, and suddenly 30 seconds seems like a lifetime. You do what you can to work off that time, but your smart opponent does the right thing: he moves quickly and trades off your defenders, leaving your king helpless to his material superiority. You wind up in a position where you have to sit, having worked off exactly 28 of those 30 seconds.
Yes, this is an especially frustrating way to lose, but you can't feel bad about your effort in this game. Sometimes bad players manage to mate their own partners, and this scenario is a case in point. You can think of the situation the same way you would regular chess: with a queen advantage and 30 seconds left in a game of regular chess, I'm sure most of us fully expect to win the game. In bughouse, when one side is forced to sit, the other side is essentially playing regular chess (with the nuance that there may be a few pieces to drop), so you can assess your chances the same way.
Of course, even though this loss wasn't your fault, don't be surprised
if you now get a message from your partner that reads something like "oh
man, you choked!" At this point, you'll wish there was a way you could
reach through your computer screen, grab him by the throat, and show
him what choking is really like.
So there you are one night, picking off pieces against an opponent whose opening play leaves a lot to be desired. First you fork two pieces with a pawn drop, then a knight check wins a free rook, and finally your bishop pins his queen. Well, right after he plays QxB, you notice the bishop drop on your partner's board, and, hmm, it looks like your partner's opponent has mate in two. Ugh, it's tough to lose a game when you're cleaning house, but you send a message anyway, congratulating your partner's opponent on finding a nice mate. And your partner sends you a message that says, "you idiot, why'd you give him that bishop!"
Okay, let's analyze what just happened:
Now, as I said at the beginning of this article, I'm not a top player, but I'm still pretty sure the two points I am about to make are accurate. Point #1: Even the best players spend most of their time studying their own board, not their partner's, so what they know about their partner's position is limited to what they can see in a glance. Granted, the better the player, the more he sees in that glance, but nobody can look at a tricky bughouse position for one second and spot every cheap shot. Point #2: There are no bughouse players who can read minds. If they could, they wouldn't here, they'd be working for the Psychic Friends Network. (But, wait, I think I heard the Psychic Friends Network went bankrupt, so I guess they couldn't see the future either.)
To summarize this section: if you are in a position where a certain piece
would create major problems, it's your job to tell your partner that,
not your partner's job to figure it out. Don't be ashamed to tell your
partner that a knight mates you on the move, tell him. Many games are lost
that could have been saved with a message like "n---", and the player who
was too lazy to send the message has only himself to blame.
I'm going to make this section fairly brief because I have a particular distaste for these players. (Ew, my keyboard's getting slimy as I type this!) Here we are talking about players who are obsessed with their ratings. In extreme cases, these are players who will play only with grossly underrated partners (say, National Masters with 1400 ratings), or even resort to cheating in their almighty quest to gain more rating points. You don't want to play with these guys. One loss is usually all it takes to set them off.
Now, I have nothing against ratings. I think they are a great way to
measure your progress. But that is the way ratings should be utilized --
as a measuring stick. Using artificial or unethical ways to increase
your rating defeats that purpose,
making your rating useless as a gage of how good you really are.
In short, pay attention to your rating, but don't get hung up by it.
As you get better, don't worry, your rating will go up. And, if you drop
a bunch of points some night because you have the misfortune
of playing with a chump who's either grossly overrated or drunk --
don't worry, if your old rating was deserved, it will grow back. (Note:
I'm stealing that last line from somewhere, but I don't remember where.
If you know where I'm stealing it from, feel free to contact me, and I'll
give the author of that witticism the credit he deserves.)
Oh, one more thing about ratings: they're not a pecking order. The fact
is, unless your rating puts you in the World's Top Ten, nobody cares.
This line is from a key scene in the movie "Good Will Hunting", a movie I highly recommend. I think chessplayers in particular will take an interest in the main character and in the mind games taking place throughout the movie. And speaking of mind games...
There are plenty of bughouse players out there who can hardly be called bad players but can definitely be thought of as bad partners. Here is one example:
Let's say you're new to bughouse. You've been playing a few weeks now, taking your lumps but the game is starting to make some sense. You've played some rated games to see how you're doing, sneaked peeks at the games of some of the high-rated players, maybe even surfed the Net in search of tips on how to improve your game. (Hey, you found this article, good job!) Your rating is now around 1300, not too shabby for a newcomer. Well, one night you log on to play a few, send out an advertisement for a partner, and, to your amazement, a 2200 rated player offers to partner you. You're so thrilled by the prospects of playing with a really good partner, your lower extremities start to tingle. You think you've got yourself a dream partnership.
Have you really? Well, maybe, maybe not.
Now, it's true that some of the best bughouse players are also really
nice guys. They play bughouse because it's a pleasant diversion, because
it's fun. Some nights, they're logged on with nothing better to
do. Your ad goes by and it has a handle they don't recognize,
so they figure you must be a new player. On an impulse, they decide
to pass their love of the game onto a newbie, and so they partner you.
The worst that can happen, they figure, is that they drop around 50 points,
and they can always get those points back some other night. Yes, these are
good partners. You've died and gone to bughouse heaven.
Then there are the high-rated players who have a completely different reason for deciding to partner you. These guys are like investors who are attracted to low-priced stocks: they like to speculate. Since rating changes in bughouse are computed by averaging the ratings of the partners, your low rating is bringing down the average of the team, which means more points for winning. Okay, fine, I have nothing against speculative ventures, but some of these speculators can be real jerks. These are bad partners. Watch your back 'cause in this place pitchforks are everywhere.
When you play with these guys, the problems will start when you, a 1300 player, start playing like a 1300 player. You'll make mistakes, hang pieces, maybe even walk into a mate in one. Sure, it's embarrassing to miss moves like that, but, hey, you're 1300. You're going to screw up. It's part of the learning process.
Now, when you walk into a mate in one, the good partners will cringe (no sense in lying here) but they won't send you a message berating you for your stupidity. You are, after all, a 1300 player. They'll just remind themselves that your rating is bringing down the average for the team, so the team only has to score 50%, or whatever the break-even percentage is rating-wise, for the partnership to be considered a success. They'll support you, tell you that everyone makes mistakes, and maybe offer a tip or two. You'll learn a few things about bughouse playing with these guys.
In contrast, the jerky partners will give it to you good when you make
a bad oversight. You'll be doused with a vitriolic message (pointless,
of course), and as a general rule it'll be the last game you play with the
guy. The truth is, this boor actually did you a favor by breaking up
with you, but the important thing now is to avoid thinking negatively about
yourself. You're a 1300 player. It's not your fault. Don't
let this jerk diminish your desire to want to learn the game. Keep playing,
you'll make steady progress in your understanding of the game, and that
progress will be reflected in your steadily increasing rating.
Above all, just have fun.
I haven't mentioned this yet, so I will now: the ten studies in bad partnerships described in this article are not in any particular order. In fact, if a poll were to be taken, I think the players I'm about to describe would win the vote as the most irritating players of all...
Earlier this article I talked about how some players seem to regard bughouse ratings as a kind of pecking order. The difference may be only ten points, but that doesn't matter -- his rating is higher, therefore he's in charge. When you play with this guy, he vaguely reminds you of someone from your distant past, and then suddenly the deja vu takes shape: he's exactly like that kid at 4th grade recess who had to take every shot because he thought he was Oscar Robertson. (Note: if you're saying "Oscar who?", substitute Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan, depending on when you were out on that playground. If your selection is Michael Jordan, move your glass of Ovaltine, it's too close to the keyboard.) Okay, maybe he was a better athlete than you and everybody else out there, but that's missing the point -- you were playing a team game, and, correctly played, team games entail team play. Unfortunately, team play was too abstract a concept for this kid, so passing the ball to someone with an easier shot was unfathomable. The kid's mind didn't work that way.
Now let's meet the bughouse equivalent to that playground kid.
Having noted he is (pause for fanfare) the higher rated partner, he will
attempt to control both boards, telling you when to sit, when to move,
and what moves to make.
For you, this means no fun and a no-win situation.
The reason you won't have any fun should be obvious.
As for why this is a no-win situation, it is because:
Now, I'm not saying a player who sends a message like "sit" is always out
of line. Sometimes it is because he sees something is about to happen on
his board, and it would be to your advantage to stop moving. For example,
maybe he sees there are going to be exchanges on his board, so he suggests
you stop moving until you receive the material. Granted, "sit" sounds
rather rude and "exchanges coming over here, sit and you will get some
stuff" would sound a lot nicer, but time constraints, both in the typing
and in the reading, tend to inhibit diplomacy. So, don't tell your partner
you have to empty the dishwasher the first time he barks a command at you.
See if he had a good reason. If he sends these commands judiciously and
doesn't try to control your whole game, you'll eventually come to realize
the guy is actually a pretty solid partner.
I think it is appropriate to finish this article with some thoughts on why some bughouse players don't do well together. Here we aren't talking about bughouse partners that are bad in general, just bad for you. In other words, the issue is incompatibility.
Anybody who has played bughouse for awhile has probably run into some variation of the following scenario: you and Player X both have roughly the same rating, so one night you pair up and in an hour or two of play manage to drop about 200 points. You're not sure what went wrong. Your partner seemed decent enough, and you didn't notice anything flagrantly wrong with the way he played. There is a vague feeling the chemistry wasn't quite right, but that's about it.
Well, you and Player X get back in form on subsequent nights, and your ratings return to their old levels. Then comes that fateful evening you are both logged on and chat for a few minutes. You talk about the last time you played together and you both agree that it was just an off night. So, you decide to pair up again, get some matches going, and, son of a gun, it's a replay of last time: lower rated teams are beating the pants off you, the clock appears to be running twice as fast for you as for your opponents, and it seems like you never have the pieces you need. Well, this is just too much, and civility now goes out the window. You and your partner harp about each other's clock management or lack of communication or whatever it is that is bugging each of you about the other. After a few more losses, the harping turns into open hostility and you're signing the divorce papers. It'll be months, if ever, before you talk to each other again; in fact, you feel awkward whenever you get on the bughouse channel and see that other guy out there.
"Okay, Doc, you're so smart, so tell me why two supposedly decent players stink together." I'd be glad to. I'm no psychologist, but I've been a tennis captain for over seven years, and the dynamics of bughouse is a lot like doubles tennis: both are competitive, both have two players to a team, and in both, the success of a team is to a great extent determined by how successfully the two players interact with each other and play off each others' strengths.
In my work as a tennis captain, it's amazing how many teams I've seen
where the players didn't mesh. Sometimes there is a tangible reason
why the team doesn't work; for example, maybe both players like to attack
but tend to go for risky shots, so consistency is a problem. And sometimes
the reason is intangible, that nebulous thing we think of as chemistry --
some players just aren't good for each together in a competitive situation.
What's curious about this is that the two players can be best buddies off
the court, but on the court they're Mutt and Jeff. Maybe they can't play
together because they're both too easy-going (they need partners with some
intensity to get the fire going), or maybe they're Jekyll-and-Hyde types
that turn slightly crazy in competition (they need partners to keep their
heads in the match). Whatever the reason, they're not a good partnership,
and, as I've learned from bitter experience, no amount of practice
together will make them one.
So some tennis teams fail due to irreconcilable differences, but there are other ways for a partnership to fail, and I'm going to talk about two of them here. The first one is overconfidence -- underestimating your opponents. For example, let's say you and your partner have a match to play. You check out the scouting report and record of the team you're about to play, and the opposition looks weak. You and your partner tell each other that this will be a walk in the park -- no way you can lose. Okay, it may turn out that you're right: maybe the other team really is lousy and you slaughter them. But if you are wrong, if these chumps for some inexplicable reason give you a match, then you are in serious trouble. You and your partner thought you'd run through these guys like a cheap burrito, and here it is, 4-4 in the final set. You look across the net, and these chumps are loose, high-fiving each other after every winner. Meanwhile, you and your partner are nervous -- panic is setting in, a tailor-made situation for the old choke-ola. Oh, you may still pull out this match, but, to be brutally honest, my money is on the chumps.
The second way to lose matches you should win is to start arguing with your partner. Boy I feel silly writing that -- it seems like such an obvious thing to say -- but we're all witness to enough bickering (both on the tennis courts and most certainly in the bughouse arena!) to where the point has to be made. Can anyone honestly say he plays better after arguing with his partner? You're mad at him, he's mad at you, so teamwork goes out the window and you take the Afternoon Express to Palookaville. The only good thing you can say about arguments with your partner is that they generally lead to quick losses, so the arguments don't last long.
Oh, sure, I suppose there's nothing really wrong with offering your partner some constructive criticism about what he is doing wrong; however, you need to be real careful how you do this. It's very easy for this advice to be taken sarcastically, either because you don't say it the right way (which can easily happen if you are a little disgusted with your partner's play), or because your partner, sensing he is not playing well, is not in the mood for some unsolicited coaching. So, maybe the safest course is to say nothing and hope the match turns around, as matches often do. Just don't argue. Neither one of you are trying to lose on purpose.
Okay, having just gone into fairly explicit detail on how some teams perform a self-induced crash and burn, what about the successful teams, the ones that make it work? What's their secret? Well, one way to answer that question would be to say they don't do what the unsuccessful teams do, but I suppose that's more glib than informative. Here's a better answer: they know how to play off each other, how to utilize each other's good points. Let's illustrate this point with yet another tennis example:
Suppose you are a smart, quick player, lacking somewhat in the power shots but good at running balls down and getting them back. Your partner has a more brutish style, but he does put the balls away with a certain panache. For your partnership to work, step one is to understand each other's strengths and weaknesses. That's tougher than it sounds -- the tricky part here is assessing your good points and bad points with some objectivity, not so easy for us humans. (Egotistical animals that we are, we like to think we are good at everything!) So, thinking objectively, you conclude that your strength is in keeping the point alive, your partner's strength is in finishing it. That suggests your team plan: you will play set-up man for your partner, trying to force weak returns from your opponents. Your partner will be the attacker, getting to the net to finish the points, even if it means letting you have more of the backcourt. (Of course, your partner will be happy to let you have more court if it means he gets to hit a lot of flashy put-aways.)
Yes, your roles will change at times -- another component to success is being flexible, adapting your play to the situation at hand -- and so some points will develop in such a way that you become the attacker who finishes the point. But the real key here is that each player understands his basic role in the game plan. When you have a solid game plan, one based on utilizing each other's strengths, you will have maximized your winning chances. Above all, you won't beat yourselves.
"Hey, Doc, I mean Coach, we're almost done with this section, and you've said next to nothing about bughouse!" That's not true, good buddy. Reread the last several paragraphs, starting with the one that begins, "In my work as a tennis captain..." <here's a hyperlink to get there!> and visualize a bughouse scenario in place of each tennis scenario. Everything will make perfect sense.
Oh, just one parting thought: the next time you feel you're having
a really good night, take note of your partner's style of play --
this is what to look for in a compatible partner.
You have found a player who makes you look good. Be sure to thank him
for being a terrific partner, look for him every time you sign on, and,
if "he" is a member of the opposite sex, consider marriage.
Since I originally uploaded this article in March, 1998, I've received a number of comments about it from other bughouse players, and so far pretty much all of the feedback has been positive. I certainly appreciate everyone's comments, and I especially appreciate the efforts of Roger Overholser (aka ROGERO), who has recommended the article to many other players.
A few players wrote to me not only to express their opinion about the
article but to add their own thoughts and strategy tips on bughouse
play. If you've been clicking on those green "Gnejs dots" as you read this,
you've already seen many comments by Swedish superstar Andre Nilsson,
a.k.a. Gnejs, but he's not the only Bughouse God who has written to me.
I've taken the most interesting letters and compiled them on a separate
Web page - pull up Reader Responses to
"Top Ten Ways To Tell You Have a Bad Bughouse Partner"
for some insightful comments from some top players.
Hey, I know you bughouse players are an opinionated bunch, and as you
were reading this, I'm sure all sorts of insightful remarks and catty
comments popped into your heads. Well, my head is as thick as anybody's,
and I'd be interested in any comments you'd care to pass along,
be they positive, contentious, or just plain ridiculous.
E-mail me your remarks, and,
what the heck, if I think your e-mail has one or two particularly insightful
points, I'll work them into an update of this Web site, plus I'll credit
you with the words of wisdom. (Also, if you're really good
and you send me a whole bunch of comments and strategy tips, you may just
get your own dot, like Gnejs did -- imagine, your own dot on a Web page
that gets dozens of hits every year!)
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