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,
John Cochrane (chess player) chess aware of how strong Cochrane was at his peak, and described him as "Father of the English Chess School". During the second part of Cochrane's career in India his main opponents were the Indian players Moheschunder Bannerjee and Saumchurn Guttack. Cochrane's first recorded use of the Cochrane Gambit against Petrov's Defence was in a game against Bannerjee in 1848. Bannerjee's fondness for fianchettoed openings, as reported by Cochrane, eventually led to the Indian defence class of openings. Another game, published in William Norwood Potter's "City of London Chess Magazine" shows Bannerjee playing with the black pieces and beating Cochrane