Crazyhouse is Super-Powered Chess

Apart from chess endgames, crazyhouse is essentially chess with more ammo... Same tactics and strategy of chess are essential in crazyhouse and it's a great training in mating nets and piece coordination.

But after a long conversation with CrazyHome, what crazyhouse lacks is more strong chess players and more IMs and GMs trying out the game and bringing their own unique styles to bear on it. We are graced with JannLee opperwezen catask gsvc TheFinnisher TwelveTeen but really more IMs and GMs should try it to get into it.

One drawback that puts people off is openings. This is a pity. Maybe crazyhouse 960 is the future. Yet it's also true that half of the best players don't care much for theory.

Here is some placement crazyhouse we played with CrazyHome followed by a long chat. How to get more strong chess players involved?

youtu.be/Frohp0y9o1o

There is also the yearly zh arena this afternoon!

lichess.org/tournament/OwBEn5yb

What's wrong with JKthebullfrog, Mastertan, Xuanet, VariantsOnly, Bugzilla, Mugwort, Chickencrossroad, RapidVariants, Yscorpion, Blitzbullet, Sorsi, Amelyplaying et al?

Yes! They are all awesome! But the reality is that the moooorrre top players the richer the game. And not enough of the great pool of classical chess talent are applying their wits to the game.

One of the greatest advantages of Crazyhouse over chess is it's decidiveness. Yes, draw is possoble in zh too, but unlike top level chess it's very unlikely. I'd really like to see people taking this game more seriously than just a nice spending some time for fun, as it is now. I mean a classical zh. It would be great to follow all those mentioned above top zh players in a close tournament with a 7h classical time control with all the online commentaries (GM Yasser Seirwan for instance fits perfectly to this role) and refs sitting at each table and changing the captures pieces to the opposite color and adding it to the stack outside. Plus even somehow marking promoted pawns.

All these will marginally boost the interest for this game and consenquently attract some serious sponsors who will pull some top chess players, who are more than familiar of this game, like Nakamura, MVL and Aronian, to participate in such an event next time, make a serious opening preparations for each game, as they are used to, and bring their chess talent into zh.

Regardless, I find it right the attempt to involve more strong chess players into zh, as I'm absolutely convinced that GM's and IM's have much more chances to succeed in zh than others.

Serious OTB Crazyhouse is problematic because using 3D pieces are rather problematic. Especially in time trouble!
Pieces in this video may be the future :) www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpS2olyEvkk

There is a much nicer set made by tmcromwell!

youtu.be/HJrT0PZV16c

Wow, this looks much nicer, thx!

How to get wider participation in zh? How to deepen the knowledge in zh?

To put this in perspective, consider this:
A) Most online games are not played in a professional way, in that most people -
1. Do not set aside time exclusively to play chess on a laptop. Mostly people play to kill time briefly on computer/mobile/tablets.
2. Do not have an exclusive time duration set aside just for playing at a particular time of the day
3. Do not train intensively to hone skills for a particular game with a big learning curve

B) Perhaps, the greatest drawback of standard chess is the necessity to
1. Learn - big learning curve to learn chess itself
2. Keep up - with current opening theory which is never-ending
3. Escape - the online chess world provides an escape from mainstream dog-eat-dog theoretical discussions (via ultrabullet/bullet/other variants)

Keeping in mind that this is a mutually exclusive set, it makes sense to have a version of zh (sorry, I am unable to represent other variants, not to discredit them) which is easy for the large majority of chess players to enter the game without looping back into the drawbacks outlined in section B.

I guess, placement zh or 960 zh makes sense in this respect, because ANY standard chess player can readily start playing and enjoy it by SUCCEEDING at it. It is counterproductive to have a "strong chess player" (IM/GM/untitled) lose to a seasoned 1800-rated zh player. This will frustrate any "strong chess player" since this is illogical. It is not "right" to expect that the "strong chess player" should play a few thousand games "just to get familiar" with zh. After all, what's in it for them?

To the question that why should they play at all (let them go to hell theory), one must remember that the game gets richer in terms of ideas only through participation from diverse and large number of people. In that sense, the game of zh will plateau in terms of ideas if you choke out the vast majority of strong chess players. It makes more sense to encourage wider participation and clean up the roadblocks to "quick success"

No opening theory should be possible. After all, isn't this why most people love zh? Placement zh and 960 zh makes perfect sense for this use case (to my knowledge). Please put forward your views too (tagging you not to spam, but because of your interest in zh). Do remember that the idea is to let more people enjoy the game and not "cheapen" the variant as such.

Putting in a lengthy post because I enjoy the variant and see it as a great way to experience the joy of chess. Looking forward to hearing what you think.

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