Talk:Crazyhouse

The sample game

In the sample game to the right in the article, the black king moves into check by the white bishop. MizardX (talk) 20:19, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe that the way it's annotated, there's supposed to be a black pawn at g7 until the final move when White takes it. Evercat (talk) 17:57, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

That is correct. Thank you for pointing that out. The picture says white’s second move is Bxg7. The x means capture. Therefore, the bishop captures the black pawn at g7. --Mschribr (talk) 02:30, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Checkmate

Am I right in thinking that checkmate must involve one of:

1. A piece in contact giving check
2. A knight giving check
3. The defender having no material in hand?

i.e. a range check that would normally be checkmate can still be blocked, is that correct? Evercat (talk) 23:04, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Having found a source, apparently I was essentially right. Double checks might also be mate... Evercat (talk) 23:58, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

There is at least one exception to this principle: the defender having one or several pawns in hand while being "range-checkmated" on the first or the eighth rank (think of a back-rank mate). Given that pawns cannot be dropped on these ranks, the defender will be unable to block the attack. Fedinar (talk) 17:35, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Are Computers or Humans Stronger?

Who is stronger in Crazyhouse, humans or computers? Mschribr (talk) 15:03, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

I think humans beat computers as of now. There is a "critterbot" engine on FICS which has about 2500 rating but I will need to search more. panefsky (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:44, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

In late 2016 and early 2017, A Stockfish variant beat Jann Lee 34 to 1 over three videos. Computers have now exceeded the best human crazyhouse players https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP3nHtK2ndw — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.231.246.6 (talk) 21:53, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Game complexity

What are the state-space complexity and the game tree size of a Crazyhouse? Mschribr (talk) 23:01, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

It should be much greater than real chess. After exchanges have been made, and since one can drop a piece anywhere on the board, there should be more than 40 moves per turn. panefsky (talk) 17:48, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

How popular is crazyhouse?

Is there a crazyhouse federation? Are there crazyhouse tournaments? How many people play crazyhouse? Mschribr (talk) 19:54, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

There was a tournament in Russia according to Russian language version page.Matyapiro31 (talk) 23:49, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

@Mschribr and Matyapiro31: Well, there are technically tournaments all the time on chess servers like lichess, chess.com, and FICS, but they're informal and don't typically mean anything more than any other games on those servers. There have also been bigger, more organized tournaments, including several claiming to be "world championships" and the like, but as there's no central organizing body, there are no "official" championships outside of individual chess servers. Examples: chess.com, lichess... can't find a link to the FICS tournaments, but they happened pretty regularly, I think, between ~1998-2008. It's also entirely online, afaik, since it's among the harder variants to play over the board. As for number of players. My sense is the most popular place for crazyhouse now is lichess, where there have been about 3800 zh players in the past week. That's far more than FICS ever had, to be sure (and FICS used to be the most popular place for it). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 18:12, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites @Jasper Deng I added a section on popularity based on the best data available. May I know why you removed it? @Rhododendrites you indicated that it was inaccurate. You are wrong; anyone can check the data for themselves since it is publicly available (cf the source I included in my contribution). @Jasper Deng you indicated that the source was unreliable. Again, Lichess's data is public, meaning that the statistics I provided are verifiable. You further indicated that the contribution was "not indicative of much". This is only your personal opinion. This very discussion on Crazyhouse's popularity shows that such information may be of interest. While the statistics do not encompass the entirety of Crazyhouse games, they are clearly labelled and provide a useful order of magnitude. Fedinar (talk) 10:22, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

tables/results

Wikipedia typically doesn't cover something just because it exists. For a tournament/match/whatever to be included on wikipedia it should receive secondary source coverage. That's how we separate notable events from some get-together at the local library. The massive tables in this article are a big WP:WEIGHT problem... — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 04:03, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

A year and a half later, the section has only grown and still not any secondary sources. Removed. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 22:30, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Result

Not a reliable source, but here's what Larry Kaufman said on a forum post: Regarding the game [Crazyhouse] itself, my impression, based mostly on looking at engine games, is that the only real drawback to the game is that White almost certainly has a theoretical win and a huge advantage at top engine level, though this is probably not the case at human level. Double sharp (talk) 18:14, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

I found a similar statement in one of his books, so I incorporated that instead. Alas, the most interesting statements from Kaufman are still only in that thread. But here's a nice quote anyway:

Regarding the above 1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 d5 3.d4, now that I've studied the lines and learned a bit more about the game, I'm inclined to think that it's not so much a question of specific lines that it sees, but rather the incredible value of tempi and mobility and king safety. If White plays the obvious 3.exf6 and Black plays e7xf6, Black has gained two tempi (...d5 and e7 to f6; the pawn is far better on f6 than e7, not blocking the bishop but guarding critical squares e5 and g5). So basically Black got a pawn and two moves for the knight. In chess that's not nearly enough, but it seems that in Crazyhouse a tempo early in the game is worth something like a pawn, so it's sort of like three pawns for a knight, which might be enough in Crazyhouse, I don't know. As a shogi master this seems bizarre to me, but in shogi pawns in hand are far less valuable than in chess due to the "no doubled pawns allowed" shogi rule. While I'm still very skeptical that this line of play (perhaps hard to avoid after 1...Nf6) is actually a good defense by Black, I must admit that I could well be wrong; perhaps since other first moves also lose, 1...Nf6 isn't clearly worse, and perhaps 2...d5 is better than moving the knight again. Still it seems bizarre not to take it!

Regarding the White advantage, it seems that the four most natural first moves (1.e4, 1.d4, 1.Nf3, and 1.Nc3) all retain a probably winning advantage, while if you trust FSF NNUE the other 16 moves all favor Black at least slightly. 1.e3 seems to be the closest to equal, though perhaps not close enough to be called "balanced". So it seems that there is no restriction on White's first move that really makes the game equal based on this engine. Of course longer sequences are very equal, for example 1.e4 e5 2.d3 seems to be a virtual toss-up, but that's not a very elegant way to start a game. Simply forbidding White from short castling also shows very nearly a zero score, but again not very elegant. A "Komi" rule like "Black wins after 40 moves are completed" (or whatever proves fair) might be the best way to play balanced Crazyhouse. Perhaps there are other ideas. It seems to me that a balanced offshoot of Crazyhouse would be a very interesting game, even for engine competition.

— Larry Kaufman

Double sharp (talk) 08:55, 25 September 2023 (UTC)