Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

'But crazyhouse is better' -- interesting comment.

What you call Crazyhouse is, I think, the 'Double Bughouse chess' to which
the mimeographed magazine 'New England Double Bughouse Chess' was devoted
in the 1970s. (That's how people communicated then. Inconvenient, slow, and
expensive compared to the internet, but would you believe it people
communicated with each other even before there was an internet! What a
mindblowing idea, no?)

Funny thing is, your comment makes me think that the last time I played
that game you hadn't been born yet. Stalling was a bad consequence of the
rules as they were then; have they fixed this?

If you say it's better, you should say why you think it's better. By
providing reasons, you might get people to respond with counter arguments,
and once in a while they would convince you you were wrong and once in a
while you would convince them and most of the time you'd have fun arguing
but you wouldn't get anywhere. Welcome to the internet.

Does the game you call crazyhouse require 4 players? Did you know that in
the 1970s I described how you could play it with 2 teams of 100 players?

This is an excellent game: like Shogi is IMO one layer of complexity above
regular chess. 
I suppose that because of the dropping rule, the endgame is never going to
be reached really, and the board will be always relatively crowded.
This implies that the pieces values are different. Here's my bet

Regular chess: Q>R>B=K>P
Chessgi: Q=K>P (they can be dropped on the 7th)>B>R

Am I right?

Regards

Paolo Anderson

[email protected]

"All rules of normal Chess apply"... But how should we interpret them in the context of possibilities not existing in normal Chess? E.g. the Pawn double-push: are Pawns allowed to move two steps forward because they are on second rank, or because they have not moved before? In orthodox Chess this is the same, but here they can be dropped back on the second rank. And how about Pawns on the first rank? Do these also have a double-move? (And can they be e.p. captured then?) What if they take a single step to the second rank, do they have a double-push too?

Though this variant may never be as popular as its close cousin (and better known variant) Crazyhouse, it is equally excellent on its own merits.

In the the diagram below White has five pieces on the board and a single Rook "in hand". All the other pieces belong to Black. Suppose White drops this Rook on (b2) and Black advances his Pawn to (c3). This "blockade stalemate" has resulted in a drawn game.

ATTENTION EDITORS: This Chessgi problem also provides an answer to the Patricia Stalemate Puzzle. I recently constructed another stalemate position with fewer pieces than this one and would like to add a suitable diagram to the puzzle solution page.