by FM Ashvin Sivakumar
The 1st Chess Against Covid Online Bughouse Challenge was a resounding success. Held on the 22nd of May from 8pm-8:45 p.m., it attracted 26 enterprising chess players, willing to try their hand at a scintillating variant of chess: Bughouse.
Bughouse is played with teams of 2 players working together: when one player captures a piece on his board, he can pass it to his teammate to “plant” on his board. A total of 6 rounds were played. Under the chess.com bughouse tournament format, partners were swapped after a loss. By the end of the 6 rounds, FM Lee Qing Aun emerged as the champion with 5/6, followed closely by IM Liu Xiangyi and FM Andrey Terekhov, both tied for 2nd with 4.5/6, and Royce Ho in 3rd with 4/6, beating out 5 other players on tiebreak.
Exciting games were played, with the tables turning quickly: for example, FM Lee Qing Aun sprung a surprise pawn checkmate on IM Liu Xiangyi when the latter forgot about his weakened kingside.
The Organisers would like to apologise for any confusion during the event as we are still relatively unfamiliar with chess.com’s specific bughouse eccentricities. We will considerorganising another bughouse event when we have a better understanding of the bughouse tournament system.
All in all, it was a very successful bughouse tournament. We look forward to your continued participation in our Chess Against Covid events!
