Featured Game

Here's entry #11 in my Featured Game series. You will find on this page:

• A double board puzzle, using a position taken from the game. Try to find a way for Sheena and pinklung to force mate.

• A downloadable annotated version of the game in .bpgn format

If you don't have the BPGN viewer on your machine, then head over to my first Featured Game, which has links that can be used to download the viewer.

Featured Game #11:

GI Janes

This is my last annotated game for the year 2000, and it's dedicated to a small but significant portion of the bughouse community: the female player. Personally, I think it's vital to have women in the bughouse arena, if for no other reason than to soften the testosterone-laden atmosphere that often pervades channel 24. Women have always been by nature better diplomats than men -- heck, if you were to ask me, I'd tell you that running governments nowadays would be best left to the women. With women in charge, there'd be less hostility between nations, less risk of global destruction (and probably also more ethical government, but that's another issue). Until maybe sixty years ago, I think it was okay to have the men in charge, but the destructiveness of modern weaponry changed all that. Now we need the superior social skills of women to keep the boys from playing with toys that have gotten too dangerous.

All right, I'll get off my soapbox now. Getting back to bughouse:

That fraternity atmosphere in channel 24 can't be easy on the female buggers, not to mention the notion held by some male buggers that men are somehow genetically superior for bughouse play. (On that latter point: Sorry boys, but I fail to see how the possession of a penis relates to bughouse ability. Judging from the buggers I know, certainly there is no relationship between the size of a player's penis and his bug rating, if you catch my drift.) However, in this alien atmosphere some women still manage to survive. In fact, some women survive quite well, a fact that warms my heart to no end -- it's wonderful see players who derive so much enjoyment from the game that they are willing to endure the harangues of a bunch of hormonally-doped teen-agers to play.

So, here's a game for all you dudes who think chicks can't play bughouse. If this game doesn't convince you that women understand the principles of good play as well as men do, well, who cares -- to be brutally honest, the bughouse world needs them a lot more than it needs you.

sgs 01:23	Pulmannen 00:53
pinklung 01:32*	Sheena 01:57*
* indicates player to move next