Bughouse on Lichess

Hi,

I started playing Bughouse again, on chess.com, and find the community extremely toxic! (Probably a solid 10% of randomized partners are either overtly abusive or actively anti-teamwork in how they communicate. Seems like a small number but I'm autistic and really struggle when exposed with such vitriol.)

I know it's been asked before, but can't find another place to add my voice to the petition.

Not only would it be fun to have Bughouse here but I think it would do great things for chess in general and the community at large to host the game in a place with a significantly healthier emotional environment.

Thank you for your consideration; please note that if there's anything I can do to actively make this happen then consider me volunteered. (My programming skills are lackluster but I know how to string sentences together in english and would be willing to help crowdsource fundraising if that's a potential hurdle...)

(Worth adding I've been around long enough that, even though I can't find a reference to it today, I vaguely recall hearing the last time this was brought up that the issue was server logistics. If that's the case, and if this really is a closed matter, know that, either way, I appreciate your time. Thank you!)

> Please don't ask me for bughouse. Lichess is a game for one board and two players. Now, someone should totally build a new bughouse website/app. It's impossible to integrate into lichess because it's radically unlike chess, structurally speaking.

lichess.org/blog/Vp3sMSEAAB4AHiwT/omg-crazyhouse

Re: Lichess architecture
youtu.be/LZgyVadkgmI

@Toadofsky said in #2:
> Re: Lichess architecture

Thank you for the link back to the original words; it's good to have the telephone rumor mill cleared up a bit. And thank you for the vid, too. I now understand a bit more about the way things work!

For a few hours I was seriously considering building a bughouse site on my server but as Thibault said in the video don't build if you're not willing to maintain it. That makes me doubly appreciate all the effort that goes into lichess as I have neither the ability nor time to run a nonprofit bughouse server (but it is fun to dream.)

Thanks a million, again and again, for your reply. Really this site has changed my life for the better and I appreciate all the hard work!

That all said... someday I may be enough of an idiot to try making such a site, but I'm working on Shogi etc. first (and shogi is just as fun).

i agree ches.com is so much laggy and all. it woud be better if lichess had bughouse.

and if lichess thinks its just a game of 2 persons.

so just remember that people were also against coming up of computers in chess.
SO CURB THIS RADICALISM!

I wonder what makes Bughouse so toxic, though? Is it just chesscom, or there are more intrinsic properties of the game, which create conditions for toxic dynamics? I asked similar question some older players from FICS days and it was toxic back then too. Some, in retrospect even admitted they themselves added to the toxicity back in the days.

@blunderman1 said in #6:
> I wonder what makes Bughouse so toxic, though?

My amateur opinion is that it's a combination of randomized pairings leading to uncoordinated teamwork and people who are just judgmental jerks multiplied by the entitlement of being "king" of their own little army...

That said, I think that makes Bughouse a mirror rather than an amplifier of toxicity in our culture.

Playing a team game necessitates a pretty high bar of empathy to clear. Bughouse is a game that punishes selfishness and rewards cooperation. Playing on chess.com with randomized partners doesn't really create the conditions for much of a learning environment in those regards which may be more commentary on the process of randomization and less on chess.com culture itself.

Yeah, I agree the random pool definitely discourages giving constructive feedback to your partner and encourages being a jerk, because you even if you get paired next time, it is not like you intentionally go to that person and a minute after you called them an asshole have to ask them to agree to be a partner, it is just the algorithm that pairs you.

But that also has benefits, exactly for the same reason, because when the algorithm pairs you some time after you got into a fight with your partner, it is easier to shrug it off and forget about that negative episode, all you have to do is pretend you didn't notice you got paired with the same person. You don't have to say: "Hey, I am sorry for being a jerk, can we partner again" and so on and you both might actually have interest in playing again, because not much choice for partners, so the "swallow your pride" barrier that prevents you from making up is removed by the automatic pairing.

So it both, makes you less careful what you say, but also makes it easier to recover the partnership after that.

I have never played on FICS, I wonder if they had something similar to the random pool?

@blunderman1 I played on FICS years ago but I don't recall the structure, looking at the website today it looks like it hasn't been updated since 2007, except the homepage...

I think you have some good points, I like the idea of looking at bughouse online today, for me at least, as a holistic space where no matter what I encounter I'll get a net positive out of it! Thank you. I appreciate your thoughts. It seems easier to change my mind than change the world right now.

Bughouse is a 4 player variant and it is practically impossible to get that feature on Lichess.
Such threads have been created by many but Lichess haa repeatedly denied any possibility of implementing bughouse.