Bughouse chess and random to the casual onlooker; hence the name bughouse, which is slang for mental hospital. The game is traditionally played as a diversion from regular chess both over the board and online. Yearly, several dedicated bughouse tournaments are organised on a national and an international level. Bughouse is a chess variant played on two chessboards by four players in teams of two. Each team member faces one opponent of the other team. Partners sit next to each other and one player has black, while the other has white. Each player plays the opponent as in a standard chess game,
Rules of chess the one nearest White's side of the board. Each square of the board, then, is uniquely identified by its file letter and rank number. The white king, for example, starts the game on square e1. The black knight on b8 can move to a6 or c6. In formal competition, each player is obliged to record each move as it is played in a chess notation in order to settle disputes about illegal positions, overstepping time control, and making claims of draws by the fifty-move rule or repetition of position. Algebraic chess notation is the accepted standard for recording games today.