[thejteam]

I haven't played in over a decade as well, but when I did play strategies usually consisted of very quick attacks on the f-pawn, usually sacrificing a knight(sometimes a bishop, but you would have to "waste" a move getting a pawn out first) on the square as quick as possible. Very common for the first 3 moves to be a knight sacrifice on f7.

And trash talking anybody who dared castle.

[xenophanes]

FYI castling is standard in lots of bughouse openings and good in general, early f-pawn sacs are bad. This is at higher levels of play though. If you don't know what you're doing then you're better off with a move like Qe2 or Qe7 than castling.

Early sacrifices are bad because they put both you and your partner down material. Against top players, they will not let you have the pieces you need to win, and they will defend all squares, and if you spend any time waiting for pieces you'll get down on time and definitely never get what you want at the right time. Bughouse requires very fast, very solid play at the top levels.

But defending in bughouse is hard, and piece flow control is hard (requires watching partner's board while still moving super fast), so the newer the players the more that just sacrificing stuff can work.