The bugs are in the house!
(Photo: Alexandre Duret-Lutz. CC BY-SA 2.0)
We’re pleased to announce that Bughouse Chess, one of the most popular variants, is now available to play on Pychess!
Bughouse had been requested numerous times on the lichess platform from the very beginning, but was never included on the roadmap on grounds of "cost/benefit analysis" and even "long-term complexity".
Nevertheless, user support for the variant persevered and lichess users kept writing petition after petition - eventually creating a dedicated lichess-bughouse team as well.
In light of this history, it is impossible to appreciate enough the monumental effort put in by @blunderman1, who not only succeeded in implementing a working codebase for this variant, but kept perfecting it for three years. Nonetheless every big new feature inevitably has bugs, so if you find anything odd, please let us know.
Here is part one of the Chess Life bughouse articles of WIM Dr. Alexey Root and Eric Wiggins, better known as GhostShell. Thanks, Alexey and Eric! And here are parts two and three.
This variant is probably the most popular one played by club and tournament players all over the world. You can watch several top GMs playing it on John Brezina's YouTube channel