Crazyhouse: Chess With Drops
Recently, I've started playing crazyhouse, also known as z-house or ZH, very regularly and I've enjoyed it a lot. Unlike almost every other game I've played, besides Tenjiku Shogi , which is absolutely unmatched, crazyhouse is very fast-paced, with the two main considerations (and possibly the only two considerations) being king safety and attacking potential. This is best demonstrated by an example. In the above position, it is black to play and black has 3 knights, a pawn, and a queen in hand. The winning move is N@h3+ (@ denoting a drop). The king cannot run to h1, due to the very pretty Q@g1 Rxg1 Nxf2#, so White must capture. Then N@f3 (one of the main points of a knight sacrifice is to overload the g pawn, the difference between f3 and h3 being that a knight on h3 controls f2) forces Kh1 or Kg2, but which is chosen is inconsequential, as after Kh1 Black must play @g2 (the same as P@g2) to drag the king to g2 anyway. This pawn sacrifice to drag the king to a better ma
