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Can I ask one more question? Does Crazyhouse also have a Fifty-move rule(a draw if no piece is captured and no pawn moved during fifty move)? And is there a draw by Stalemate?

'Drop move' = dropping a piece from the hand on the board, as opposed to 'board move', where it was alreay on the board.

Thanks for answering! But what does 'drop move' mean? Is it moving as soon as you drop a piece?

A more natural question would be: "is there any reason why checkmating with a pawn drop is forbidden in Shogi?". You can checkmate by dropping any other piece, so why would a special exception for Pawns be needed? Or for drop moves, as it is perfectly allowed to checkmate with a Pawn move on the board. It is a highly irregular rule exception. Unlike in Crazyhouse, where all pieces are treated the same in this respect. (But there it can be considered strange that Pawn dropping on the back rank is not allowed...)

That Shogi forbids dropping of Pawns in files that already contain one is understandable from the fact that Pawns capture straight forward there: without this rul you would quickly build an impenetrable fortress of doubled Pawns around your King, and the game would become unplayable. I never saw any detrimental effects of allowing Pawn-drop mates, though.

Thanks for answering!

Only the creator of this game, whose identity is unknown, could speak authoritatively on this. I will point out that this game is based on Bughouse, not on Shogi, and it's resemblance to Chessgi is coincidence. Since Betza omitted the same rule in Chessgi, you might have better luck asking him why he omitted it. However, he is no longer active here.

Pawn drop checkamte is not possible on Shogi. Habu Yoshiharu said to Shogi, "If the Pawn drop checkmate is possible, the first player win." However, Pawn drop checkmate is available in Crazyhouse. Is there any reason why Pawn drop checkmate is possible in Crazyhouse?

Well, I am not sure the latter is correct. I never wrote a Bughouse engine. But I inquired about Crazyhouse rules last year, because I did write a Crazyhouse engine then. And it turns out this is the rule by which all other engines, and the FICS, ICC and LiChess servers play. I would be surprised if these servers would apply other rules to Bughouse.

Thanks H.G.

I find it a bit odd that dropped rooks do have castling rights in bughouse (see tandem chess rules page), yet not in crazyhouse. Due to having different inventors, I suppose.

Dropped Rooks have no castling rights. Pawns dropped on the 2nd rank do have a double push, though.

A rules question about Crazyhouse, for anyone who may know. Is it ever legal in a game for White to castle with a rook that has been dropped on a1 (or h1) after that particular rook has been moved or captured previously from/on that square? A similar question would also apply for Black, naturally. Also, I'm wondering how a rules enforcing preset for Crazyhouse would handle this, assuming it's been anticipated.

I think Greg once asked himself and a fellow Game Courier player why castling is illegal in Pocket Mutation Chess, and I suspect the answer lies in my first paragraph. Namely that it might be hard to keep track of whether certain rooks have been dropped back onto setup squares.

{edit: I suppose the same questions as above might apply to, at the least, bughouse as well. However, on the bughouse page it is explicitly noted that one can drop a rook on a setup square and still castle with it later, possibly. So, I suppose this applies to crazyhouse too - although I still wonder if the crazyhouse preset takes the possibility into account.]

Fwiw, here are relative piece values for Crazyhouse that I once saw given on someone's blog:

P = 2; B = 3; N = 3.5; R = 4; Q = 6.

For comparison, and in case one might use it for Crazyhouse too, from the wiki entry on Bughouse: "A valuation system, first suggested by FICS-player Gnejs, often applied to bughouse is pawn=1, bishop=knight=rook=2 and queen=4."

Crazyhouse (like Bughouse) is one of the most popular chess variants on the planet at the moment, and there has to be a reason. It's much like Shogi, but with chess pieces (and, unlike Bughouse, it's a 2 player game), making it especially popular with those who love bang-bang tactics (many or most chess players, I suppose).

{edit: below is an entry from a later post, for reference within this review:]

Fwiw, here are relative piece values for Crazyhouse that I once saw given on someone's blog:

P = 2; B = 3; N = 3.5; R = 4; Q = 6.

For comparison, and in case one might use it for Crazyhouse too, from the wiki entry on Bughouse: "A valuation system, first suggested by FICS-player Gnejs, often applied to bughouse is pawn=1, bishop=knight=rook=2 and queen=4."

A classic example of a game whose popularity exceeds its actual quality.

The addition of conversion to chess is a worthwhile pursuit, but the brainless mechanic of dropping a piece wherever you want, is the least imaginitive possible implementation.

More specifically the freedom to drop pieces produces a higher level of convergence in the game tree versus more restricted implementations, reducing strategic connotations of moves. Piece drops in Crazyhouse are always done on primitive grounds, check blocks, pawn promotion threat etc.

That it merely borrows this from Shogi is not a defense; those games are 1) somewhat aged, 2) purposely designed towards such a mechanic.

Were Chess capture performed by nonreplacement, pieces could simply be converted immediately and this would likely work well.

As it is, I believe there are two main implementations.

1. allow pieces of like colour to occupy common space with immediate conversion. This is not satisfactory as it simply allows the second player in a trade cycle to gain all the pieces.

2. my proposition. Captured piece is immediately converted, continues to occupy its cell and can be played on as usual. However it may not be captured at this point, and may not capture on its first move after conversion. 

On playtesting this idea, I further propose that converted piece must wait one turn before being played into a game-this avoids attritional cycles with little change to the board.

'How popular is crazyhouse?'

Quite popular on turnbased servers, I would say.  It seems popular on SchemingMinds, and on Brain King, Loop Chess (their version of CrazyHouse) is the third most popular chess variant (391 games running) (behind DiceChess (1073) and DiceChess 10x10 (1062), but ahead of Japanese Chess (316), Massacre Chess (238), Anti Chess (165), Dark Chess (157), Chinese Chess (151) and Embassy Chess (142), to compare with other chess variants popular on that server).

45wyt4se5t

I feel this needs some links or commentary addressing Crazyhouse strategy and tactics in order to be complete, plus:

The opening paragraph is wrong. Crazyhouse is a ONE-player version of Bughouse, not two-player.

:)

bug?
my game with je ju seems to have recorded the wrong winner for some
reason.
Crazyhouse&log=carlos-jejujeju-2006-214-320