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,
Infinite chess game called Courier chess was played on a slightly larger 12×8 board (96 squares) in the 12th century, and continued to be played for at least six hundred years. Japanese chess (shogi) has been played historically on boards of various sizes; the largest is taikyoku shōgi ("ultimate chess"). This chess-like game, which dates to the mid 16th century, was played on a 36×36 board (1296 squares). Each player starts with 402 pieces of 209 different types, and a well-played game would require several days of play, possibly requiring each player to make over a thousand moves. Chess player Jianying Ji