Very interesting, especially when compared to shogi (Japanese chess), where captured pieces can be dropped in anywhere on the board. So for shogi players this "ideal square" calculation can be even more natural and more flexible as well: besides the "getting existing pieces from A to B", the "drop on B" is a lot simpler. No wonder that piece exchanges (so there is something in the hand to drop) are basic feature of the gameplay.
(Source: being a fan of shogi but very very very early in my learning journey, so experts would likely describe this differently.)
Bughouse is the 4 player, 2 boards variant. You capture your opponent's pieces and give them to your team mate who can then drop them on their board. That way there is no problem with the piece being the wrong color to drop.
Shogi solves that by having the pieces be flat with the two colors on different sides, afaik.
Crazyhouse is online only, so it has no problem switching the color of the captured piece.
the two-sidedness of Shogi pieces is to deal with promotions, not control.
the pieces have a pointy end, which indicates control; you just rotate the piece so it's pointing the correct way when you drop it. when promoted pieces are captured, they also do lose their promoted status.
you can indeed DIY an OTB crazyhouse set with either flippable or directional pieces (here, you can use a marker to mark 180-rotational symmetric chess pieces so they have a "front") though, or even just use a Shogi set to do so with a piece mapping (ignoring the promoted side).
It does seem like it'd be simple to have a second chess set to play Crazyhouse in person, considering you need two sets to play bughouse just without 4 players
The unrealistic squares issue could be resolved by using legal moves for the piece. You could then evaluate the best for 1 move, 2 moves, up to e.g. 4 moves. You could also eliminate moves that visit a square already reached by a previous square to avoid duplicates.
It may be interesting to apply weights to reduce the score of squares many moves away. This would need to handle advantageous positions like check or checkmate.
> This exercise involves looking at a piece and imagining which square it would be best placed on, without initially worrying about how to get it there.
Without using Stockfish, how does one do this in their head? What rubric can you use to evaluate whether one square is better than another? (I’m a very low level player, obviously,)
Knights like to sit fairly forward, reinforced by our pawns, on squares their pawns can't attack.
Bishops like long diagonals, and to complement the pawns' attacking squares (Ps & Bs tend to cover only one color). Also good for "countering" a knight 3 squares away (Nf6 & Bf3, for example, though it seems to prefer Bg2).
Rooks like open files, doubling up, 7th rank plays, and (in this case) the rare opportunity to line it up w/ their king (Rg3).
Queens like not being trapped or sidelined (by either side's pieces), good diagonals, good files, or both (like some natural mix of rook & bishop wants).
Nice, long time lichess player including blitz arenas but had no idea they had articles.
Some interesting analysis here and how to approach the problem domain (pawn structure as a concern) but that first example, there is just no way to get that knight there in any reasonable way. Talking about unrealistic moves.
The first example is from an actual game, Larsen-Korchnoi, where White does manage to put the Knight on d5. The article includes that part of the game, it's a pretty funky manoeuvre.
(Source: being a fan of shogi but very very very early in my learning journey, so experts would likely describe this differently.)