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,
Three-player chess avoid this "petty diplomacy" problem by determining the victor as the player who first delivers checkmate, with the third player losing in addition to the checkmated player. Other solutions have been tried as well. Some variants use a board with hexagonal cells. Usually three bishops per side are included, to cover all cells of the hex playing field. Pieces move usually as in one of the versions of hexagonal chess. Some variants use a hexagonal-shaped board with quadrilateral cells (see example in the photo). Some variants have used other board shapes with quadrilateral cells. Triangular cells not on the perimeter