Delirious Bughouse

Delirious Bughouse

Delirious Bughouse was developed by Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro and Carlos Eugenio Lossio Seiblitz Filho, with earlier help from Oscar Luiz Vieira Ferreira and Carlos Vieira Ferreira. Its final step was reached around 1984.

Teams and Boards

Two standard 8×8 boards. White1 plays against Black2, and White3 plays against Black4. White1 and Black4 are allies, as are Black2 and White3: if either ally is checkmated, the other loses.

Rules

Bughouse, with two exceptions:

1. Pawns may be placed only on the 2nd to 6th ranks. In Bughouse they may also be placed on the 7th.
2. Promoted pieces keep their rank. When a promoted pawn is captured it does not turn back into a pawn: it passes to the capturer’s ally as the piece it became, and the player who promoted it gets the pawn back to place again. Every promotion therefore adds a piece to the game, and it is theoretically possible for all 128 squares of the two boards to fill.

Everything else is Bughouse: each piece captured on one board goes to the ally, who may spend a move placing it on any empty square of their own board.

Example from the source: if White1 vs Black2 goes 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 while White3 vs Black4 goes 1. Nf3, Black4 may now place a pawn on e5.

Win Condition

Checkmate either opposing King. The first checkmate decides the match.

Later stages

The same page describes how the game kept growing. Each stage is a separate game built on this one, and none is played here:

• Dice Chess: before every move the player throws a die: 1 = Pawn, 2 = Knight, 3 = Bishop, 4 = Rook, 5 = Queen, 6 = any piece. If no move with that piece is possible, any move may be played.
• Worst Move: two dice, one as above and one deciding whether the player is entitled to the best move or the worst. On “worst”, the opponent chooses the move.
• Bughouse Worst Move: both boards and both dice together.
• Fairy pieces: capturing a King earns a fairy piece, such as a Camel, Giraffe, Zebra, Taxi, Pyramid or Atomic Bomb.
• Structures, events and magic items: an open-ended set the authors kept to themselves.

Attribution

Rules from chessvariants.com/multiplayer.dir/delbug.html, written by Alberto Monteiro.