How I reached 2700 in Crazyhouse

Today I reached 2700 crazyhouse on lichess for the first time! I dedicate this milestone to the friendship and inspiration I derived from GM penguingim1 - Andrew Tang. He's undeniably the best.

my road

I started off playing chess from the age of 4. I didn't really like it, but I felt like I had to play because of the pressure of achieving new peak USCF ratings when I was little.

In high school, my buddies and I at my high school chess club would play bughouse all the time during chess club. At the time of my high school graduation in 2012, I was about mid-1700 bug strength on FICS.

I got from 1700 bug strength to 2100 from learning bughouse openings from the very talkative (to say the least) TrumpetX, who was my bughouse coach. Then, I improved at bughouse by playing a lot on FICS, watching top players play, and studying their openings on bughousedb.com. There was only one bughouse book at the time, but now there is a myriad of great resources in the House Discord Server if you're trying to improve at crazyhouse or bughouse (or any other variants, for that matter). Additionally, I'd recommend watching LM JannLee's YouTube videos to improve at crazyhouse - I still do. To improve at bughouse, check out my friend NM nochewycandy's bughouse videos on YouTube (do a YouTube search of "chewy gumdrops bughouse" and you'll see it). GRXbullet (nochewycandy on chess.com) also has great crazyhouse Studies on lichess. My FICS handle is chesschocolate, and my peak bughouse rating on FICS was in the mid-2500s, but I would usually average a FICS bughouse rating of around low-2300s from the years 2014-2015.

On this rather special day for me, I wanted to say a big Thank You to all of my bughouse and crazyhouse friends and peers for being part of the wonderful bughouse and crazyhouse community on FICS, lichess, and everywhere - this community is what helped me improve at bug and zh. The crazyhouse and bughouse communities are small, but let's make this community grow by being wholesome - I have to say that because a lot of bughouse and crazyhouse players (not so much crazyhouse - mostly bughouse) have big egos due to their highly competitive nature!

Crazyhouse and bughouse require divergent thinking when you're trying to figure out what to do. I love chess, but there's something about crazyhouse and especially bughouse that makes me feel alive. The games are very fast paced and full of action. Crazyhouse and bughouse train divergent thinking skills as well as convergent thinking skills, whereas chess is more just convergent in my opinion. Bughouse is about playing fast to be up on the clock, understanding diagonal clocks, making creative and complicated moves, communication, situational awareness, and so much more, while trying and having to remain calm - all at the same time! There's a saying in bughouse - Keep Go. It means that if you're not actively "sitting", you rarely should be spending time to think. Easier said than done. If you freeze when not knowing what to do, it really hurts you and your partner's chances of winning.

If you're reading this and are a 1700 crazyhouse player wanting to hit 2000, or a 2200 going for 2500, I believe in you. You have what it takes! Bughouse and crazyhouse have a high correlation - improve at one, and you'll likely improve at the other. If you're under 1700ish, the first thing probably you need to know if you're starting out is that in crazyhouse and bughouse, p=1, N/B/R=2, and Q=4. Castling is tough to do in crazyhouse and bughouse. You need to make certain maneuvers. It took me a long time to understand how castling is not a bad move in bughouse.

Lastly, if I blocked you on lichess, it's nothing personal. I have a system of trying to figure out who to play at crazyhouse, and blocking people that are either too strong or just don't want to accept my challenges helps me keep track of that stuff. I know it sounds terrible that I block people because of that, but yeah. Ask me on the House Discord Server to unblock you, and I'll gladly do it and apologize for the inconvenience!

my games today

I missed 11.Nxf7. My opponent played well this game. I lost badly. In crazyhouse, one bad move is all it takes to get crushed. Don't play when you're tired - I don't anymore.

13.Qe2 was awful by me. One mistake and it's curtains.

For now, I am temporarily retired from playing rated crazyhouse. Trying to hit 2800 zh seems pretty risky to me.

Thanks to Ian Stauffer from unsplash.com for the image for this blog post.

Thank you so much for reading, if you've gotten to this point. If you have any feedback, please let me know what you think in the comments below!