[Isofarro]

At that point, the winning-uber-alles guy doesn't get invited to play. Because he's over-competitive and missing the point of the exercise: stimulating the mind with an interesting and novel problem under a constraint of slight time pressure. Not win at all costs.

The game doesn't have to stand up to scrutiny of strong chess players or expert bughouse players. Those people don't play chess as a means of putting them in the frame of mind for solving dayjob problems.

You are defending a position that really doesn't need to be defended. I'm pretty sure that geeks using this as a ten minute brain exercise aren't going to think they are the next Kasparov.

[xenophanes]

"You aren't allowed to play" because you use a good strategy is a terrible system.

Blame the ruleset, not the smart players who learn the basic way the game works.

Bughouse does stand up to scrutiny of strong chess players, it's just the way to win is different than what they think the game is about.

You're still completely misunderstanding. This has nothing to do with being Kasparov. The point is that simple strategy changes, using the chess skill they already have no more, would make then far more effective at bughouse, because the bughouse rules do not work they way they are imagining.

None of this is "win at all costs" or anything. It's just a simple fact: a 15 second time advantage in bughouse is as good as a substantial amount of pieces. A one minute advantage is almost always game over. Their play is disregarding how the game works -- it's strategically poor in simple ways that they could learn to do better in a 15 minute lesson -- and you are wrong to blame people who use a part of the game (the clock) for applying basic strategy that any of them could learn in 15 minutes.

Games that rely on following special unwritten rules, such as objectively bad time management (vaguely defined for how badly you're required to play), are broken.

[Steko]

You missed the point 3 times. This isn't really about bughouse and everything you've said is about bughouse minutiae. This is about recommending a task that will quickly refresh someone during a break. I think it sounds like a great idea.

At the risk of inviting another irrelevant wall of text, I'll say that your advice while mostly on target is not all accurate. Plenty of people play 5 min bughouse. Not everyone is a high level player or interested in becoming one. For new players taking 2-5 seconds to come up with a move is often superior.

[xenophanes]

The task he recommended as a quick break just happens to be one of the hardest games around, and a game that is despite appearances, all about going really really fast. Not what he wanted. Oops... And then he recommended a version that is well over twice as hard.

All good players play 2min bughouse, go on FICS and type "best B" and look through the game history. Or just look at the games in progress, it's all 2min. More is stupid. If you look at the current game history of the highest rated active player, one of the 2min games involves a 1:48 wait on like move 6. If that was a 5min game, it would have been a 4:48 wait on move 6. So 5min is simply stupid and zero good players play 5min.

You're doing a weird mix of pretending this isn't about the details of bughouse and then getting the details of bughouse completely wrong.

Similarly you claim that taking 2-5s per move is superior for new players. This is 100% false. You will get a worse record if you do that. Stop arguing about the right strategy for newer players in a game you're clueless about. Even if you go back to 1995 or something it was still 3min games, never 5.

[Steko]

You are abrasive and ignorant but I'll slog through some points...

"The task he recommended as a quick break just happens to be one of the hardest games around, and a game that is despite appearances, all about going really really fast."

It didn't "just happen to be" anything. The whole point is an exercise that frees up your brain up from whatever else it was doing. The whole point is that it's hard and you are forced to think about it. Your mind can't wander back to what you were working on in bughouse, much less without a partner, because the game demands your attention.

"All good players play 2min bughouse, go on FICS and type "best B" and look through the game history. Or just look at the games in progress, it's all 2min."

This might be relevant if we were talking about good/high level players. We aren't, they are new players and they are playing OTB and most new players playing OTB play 5 minute bughouse. Yes, true statement, full stop.

"Similarly you claim that taking 2-5s per move is superior for new players. This is 100% false. You will get a worse record if you do that."

I would but a new player wouldn't. What's semi-optimal in bughouse is to make a strong move as fast as possible. A strong player can choose a reliably decent move in less then a second. A new player forced to move in 0.5 seconds as you suggest will make terrible moves and probably lose on both boards.

[xenophanes]

Why are you so eager to take a subject you know very little about and try to correct people who are much more familiar with it?

In the context of competent players, you specifically said that plenty of people play 5min bughouse. This is false and results in lengthy sitting.

I don't think you're getting that the way they are playing wrong is completely different than not being Kasparov. Learning to play like Kasparov would take ~20,000 hours. Learning basic time management would take ~15 minutes and make them easily twice as effective. Total ignorance is a poor defense against this -- and won't last given they want to hold a tournament -- fixing the rules to do what they want is a good way to keep the game roughly how they want.

They tried to fix their problem by changing the time control from 2min to 5-10min. They already made rule changes to try to slow the game down, but those changes were naive and are ineffective against anyone with 15minutes of basic training.

[Steko]

"a subject you know very little about "

Quit pretending that you know anything about me or that you're the only person that knows anything about bughouse. I've been playing bughouse longer then you've apparently lacked basic social skills.

[Daniel_Newby]

> Games that rely on following special unwritten rules, such as objectively bad time management (vaguely defined for how badly you're required to play), are broken.

You are the exact opposite of Calvin from the Calvin and Hobbes comics.