Aliya: Ladies Bughouse Report

“You know, guys, we might play each other, since we both have the same score,” Rose thought aloud. I suddenly realized that that was very possible. After a couple of minutes, the pairings were posted, and sure enough, we were playing against each other.

By Aliya Saldanha-Suri - NYC Lab Middle School for Collaborative Studies

2022 All-Girls National Championship: (left to right) Simone, Rose, Indira, and Aliya

“Hey, guys!” I exclaimed as soon as I walked into the lobby of the tournament hall. It was Friday morning, the first day of Girls Nationals, and I was really excited to see my friends two months after our last tournament together. I had met Simone and Rose at a tapas restaurant the night before, but I was seeing Indira for the first time in a while.

“Hi!” Indira replied as my dad went to talk to her and Rose and Simone’s parents. We stood there awkwardly in a circle, waiting for our parents to finish talking.

“Okay, we’re going to practice for the bughouse tournament, right?” Simone asked once we decided that our parents were taking too long.

“Yeah,” I responded as Indira wrinkled her forehead in confusion.

“Bughouse tournament?” Indira questioned. The parents turned to listen to our conversation.

“Yeah, Rose and Simone are doing the bughouse tournament,” Rose and Simone’s mother told Indira.

“We’re the Salkies,” Simone told us, pointing to her and Rose and chuckling. They both went to the Salk School of Science, which is where the name came from.

“Do you guys want to join the tournament too?” Indira’s mom asked us. I was a bit skeptical of the idea since I hadn’t played bughouse in forever and I certainly was not very good at it, but I decided that it could be fun. The last and only time I had been to a bughouse tournament was Girls Nationals 2017, where I went with Rose and we promptly lost every single round. It had been five years, so maybe I had improved, but I was doubtful of that too.

“I mean, sure,” I replied. “We could also just watch if you want. Indira, do you want to play?” Indira thought about it as we walked up the escalator to the playing area.

“Yeah, I want to play!” Indira said enthusiastically. I nodded and we told our parents that we wanted to join, and then we all went to find where to sign up.

After many unsuccessful minutes of wandering around, taking laps around the massive tournament hall, and recalling our old tournament experiences, we figured out that we had no clue what we were doing. Our parents offered to look around for the sign-up themselves, which was an offer we happily accepted as we went to set up our boards for bughouse.

Rose and Simone sat on one side, and Indira and I sat on the other. I reminded everyone of my disastrous bughouse skills, but they already knew that and started the clocks.

“Okay, so what should we name our team?” I asked Indira as we were playing. To no one’s surprise, we were completely losing within the first few moves. We shuffled through different ideas, from some of the funny names from the Amateurs tournament to useless names that we were just making up for fun.

After Indira and I had lost a couple of games, I started thinking about names again.

“How do we combine our names?” I asked the group. “Indiraliya?”

“That sounds weird,” Indira responded, and I agreed. Simone thought for a moment.

“India!” she exclaimed. We all started hysterically laughing at the name. It combined both of our names, and our families were both from India. It was perfect.

“No wait, Indiyas!” Rose added. I raised my eyebrows excitedly.

“Oh my gosh, that’s perfect!” I responded. Indira agreed. We paused our bughouse game, which Indira and I were, of course, losing, to go and fill in our name.

“How are we going to spell it?” I asked.

“Like I-N-D-I-A-S?” Indira wondered.

“No, wait, shouldn’t it be I-N-D-I-Y-A-S?” Rose questioned. We agreed with her.

“It needs 3 a’s!” I exclaimed. Indira jumped up enthusiastically at the thought.

“Yesss!” she said with excitement. “I-N-D-I-Y-A-A-A-S.” We laughed. It was perfect.

“Hey, our parents signed up for the bughouse tournament and we were told that we needed to give you a name?” I asked the tournament director once we had made it downstairs.

“Yeah, what was the name for that?” the man responded. I started spelling it out for him, trying not to laugh, when the man gave up on trying and just asked Indira to write it down. Indira, Rose, Simone, and I giggled as Indira neatly printed the name on paper.

“Thank you!” we all said as we left the room. We told our parents the name we had chosen, and they all seemed incredibly perplexed, much to our amusement.

We continued practicing bughouse for a bit, with Indira and I cheering very enthusiastically when we won one game out of around twenty. About fifteen minutes before the tournament, we started heading down to the tournament room.

Indira and I were playing a team with multiple people from one school, and since bughouse teams could only have two people, our opponents were one of three teams with people from the same school. We found our seats, slightly nervous at the thought of being at an actual bughouse tournament rather than just fooling around with each other.

“Indira, you know the plan, right? I’m your servant and I give you stuff, and you win the game,” I told her. She nodded. Since I wasn’t any good at bughouse and somehow always found myself in losing positions, we had established that Indira would win for us and I would just get her pieces that she wanted before my opponent checkmated me. It wasn’t the ideal strategy, but that seemed to be the only way we had beaten Rose and Simone, so it would have to do.

Our opponents approached the table as we started to make polite chit-chat.

“Hi, where are you guys from?” Indira asked our opponents. 

“Oh, we’re from here,” they responded with their Chicago accents.

  “We’re from New York,” I informed them.

 “Well, kind of,” Indira added. I technically lived in Maryland at the time of the tournament, but I had learned almost all of my chess in New York so it seemed more fitting to say I was from there.

"Have you played bughouse before?” I asked them after a couple of seconds of silence, hoping for a ‘no’.

“Yeah, we kinda play a bunch at our school,” one of the girls said. The clocks were set for the tournament, and one of the girls looked at the time.

“Dang, we only get five minutes for this thing?” she commented. I nodded, suddenly feeling confident. They hadn’t played with clocks before, surely we could win.

As it got closer to the start of the tournament, the tournament director rattled off a list of random rules as I pretended to listen.

“Okay, you guys may begin,” the tournament director said. We shook hands with the other team and I started the clock.

Right away I noticed that the other team was slightly inexperienced. They seemed a little bit confused with the clock, and I noticed that their moves were closer to regular chess moves than strategic bughouse moves. By around move 10, we were winning by time on both clocks, and we had made better trades than them. I was feeling very confident as I moved my bishop to pin my opponent’s knight to the king.

“Oh, man,” she said, thinking for a second before touching her knight to move it. My heart leaped. She pushed her knight to the center as I victoriously took the king, which made her eyes widen in shock.

“I got the king!” I exclaimed to Indira, stopping the clock. She looked at me with bright eyes as we alerted the tournament director. We soon found out that we had to play two games, and for the second game our opponents decided they wanted to switch who they played, which was allowed and totally fine with both of us since both players seemed to be at similar levels.

“Alright, I gotta be careful, because you guys got some tricks up your sleeve,” my opponent said. I chuckled quietly. A pin wasn’t much of a trick, but if it made them take more time I was happy to consider it as one.

The second game flew by, our opponents again taking too much time. Indira eventually captured the king as our opponents sighed and we alerted the tournament director.

“How did you guys do?” I asked Rose and Simone once we had both exited the tournament hall.

“We won both games,” they said. Indira nodded.

“Us too.”

“Yay!” Rose exclaimed. We sat down to talk for a while until the pairings for our second round were posted. We were playing a team of two siblings, and they had an average rating that was much higher than ours. I was a little bit nervous but decided that we should just try to have fun.

“Hi,” Indira said to our opponents when we arrived at the table. One of the sisters acknowledged her, and then the two sisters started speaking in an Indian language with each other. I couldn’t tell which one it was, but I identified it as Indian because I knew I could understand certain words from my limited Hindi knowledge.

“So, where are you guys from?” I asked the sisters because that seemed to be a good question to ask to pass the time.

“Wisconsin,” one of them answered. I had never met someone from Wisconsin, and Girls Nationals never failed to surprise me because there were girls that came from all over the country. I had mostly only been exposed to girls chess in New York City, and sometimes it amazed me to see just as many girls playing chess across the country.

“We’re from New York,” I responded as I had in the first round. Indira opened her mouth as if she was going to clarify, but decided that she didn't want to explain the same thing every round.

The rounds started, and I figured out immediately that this round was going to be harder than the last. Our opponents were talking in only their language, so we couldn’t understand them, and they also seemed to have a lot more bughouse experience than us. Suddenly, Indira and I went into a very focused state that never happened when we were playing bughouse with our friends. I guess that’s what it’s like to actually try your best to win at bughouse rather than fooling around with your friends in between tournament rounds.

“What do you need?” I whispered to Indira. Our servant strategy had completely gone out of the window for the first round since both of us were winning, but since we were playing very advanced bughouse players, it suddenly felt like we needed to be organized and utilize our “strategy." 

“I’m fine for now,” Indira responded. She was playing against the younger sister and had managed to create an attack against her opponent. However, on my board, it was the opposite. I was being attacked. Our opponents continued talking seriously in their language. I realized that I understood certain words, such as “gora” meaning horse, or “huh aath” meaning h8. A spectator, probably one of our opponents’ friends, came to watch the game.

Indira had forced her opponent into a very defensive position, while on my board, my position was slowly deteriorating. My opponent stalled for a bit while trying to help her sister, while Indira and I planned seriously. I was down on time, but I was playing quickly, which led me into a very dangerous position but also eventually forced Indira’s opponent to play. At that point, her king was in the center of the board, surrounded by Indira’s pieces. All four of us were focused, looking at the board. My heart was racing. I was about to lose the game, but Indira was about to win. If Indira couldn't win the game within seconds, I would have to play and we would lose. Suddenly, Indira slammed a piece onto the board.

“Checkmate,” she said confidently. Our opponent glanced at the board for a second and agreed while her older sister glared at her, angry because she knew that she could have beaten me and that their team was better than ours. I grinned widely at Indira as she started resetting the board. Once the boards were reset, we got ready to begin our second game, when suddenly the spectator from before butted in.

“That wasn’t mate,” she said. I looked at Indira, concerned. Everyone had agreed it was checkmate, and there was no way to check since nobody notated in bughouse and the boards had been reset. Plus, I was pretty sure that if both players agreed then it was a win for us. Regardless, I was not ready to give up our win, especially against a team that I had never dreamed of beating.

“It wasn’t?” Indira asked, confused and slightly nervous. The two sisters looked hopeful.

“No, she could’ve moved her king.”

“Yeah, but didn’t everyone agree? I think that counts as our point,” I told her. “What do you think?” I asked Indira’s opponent. She shrugged.

“I don’t know,” she said. I was pretty sure it was our point, but we called over a tournament director to ask.

“So, she won the game and everyone agreed on it, but after we reset the board a spectator said it wasn’t mate,” I informed him. He thought for a moment. The spectator had left the board to watch another game.

“First of all, they aren’t allowed to do that,” the tournament director said, smiling, then proceeded to ask a couple more questions.

“Did you think it was checkmate?” the tournament director asked Indira. She nodded. He then turned to Indira’s opponent.

“What about you?” he asked. For a second, I was worried that she would say no and we wouldn’t get the point, but thankfully Indira’s opponent said that she did.

“Okay, well then, this team gets the point. Was that your second game?” I cheered silently in my head as I responded with “no”. He told us to play our next game.

Again, we tried our hardest to beat our opponents, but the euphoria from winning the previous game against difficult opponents was still in our heads. Despite our efforts, we ended up losing the second game, which didn’t upset us at all considering the previous victory.

“We each won one,” Indira informed the tournament director as he wrote down our score.

“How did you do?” Simone asked as soon as we came out of the tournament hall. Both she and Rose were anxious to hear what had happened because we had taken much longer than they had to finish.

“We won one and they won one,” Indira said, and they had gotten the same result. We proceeded to fill them in about what had happened during the game.

“Yeah, that’s definitely not allowed,” Rose agreed.

“And, they were speaking in some foreign language!” I exclaimed.

“Guys, we should learn a language so we can do that too!” Indira said. We all laughed at the idea, but for some reason we took it seriously.

“How about Spanish? It’s the easiest because we’ve already learned a lot at school,” Simone offered. The rest of us agreed and we started googling how to say all of the pieces in Spanish, with the help of Rose and Simone's mom.

“Okay, so king is rey, queen is reina, knight is cabeza,” Simone said once we had learned all of the names. We suddenly started laughing because of Simone’s mistake.

“No, that means head!” Indira exclaimed. “It’s caballo.”

“Oh, yeah,” Simone responded sheepishly. We listed out the rest of the pieces, correcting ourselves and attempting to put them into sentences.

“No reina,” I said, making an x with my hands and laughing because we were all so bad at Spanish, though we were trying our best. Even if we did retain our limited Spanish knowledge, we were so uneducated that it would probably have been more of a disadvantage for us to use it than not.

“You know, guys, we might play each other, since we both have the same score,” Rose thought aloud. I suddenly realized that that was very possible. After a couple of minutes, the pairings were posted, and sure enough, we were playing against each other.

“Okay, guys, let’s just have fun,” I told everyone.

“Yeah, you guys, this is all for fun, no hard feelings,” Rose and Simone’s mom agreed. I was pretty sure that we were going to lose anyway because we had lost almost all of our rounds when we were playing with them, but I was kind of okay with that because at least our friends would be winning.

“Plus, we can practice our Spanish,” Rose said, which made us launch into yet another round of recitation of the pieces in Spanish.

We got into the room and started the game.

“Indira, I want a knight,” I said. “Oh wait, I’m sorry, caballo.” We continued to talk quite loudly, which attracted some attention from the other teams, who weren’t nearly as friendly with their opponents as we were. 

I was playing Simone, and I was losing, but Indira had an attack against Rose. That seemed to be the theme of the bughouse tournament so far.

After a couple more moves, Indira beat Rose. I looked at Indira, surprised because the odds were very low that we would actually beat Rose and Simone. They were a bit annoyed at each other for losing, but the tension was quickly resolved in the second game. Although the second game was quite close, Rose and Simone ended up winning.

“Hey, at least we tied,” I told them as we were all walking out of the tournament hall. They agreed.

While we were waiting for the fourth round to begin, Indira and I quickly ran upstairs to find that the Impact Coaching Network team room was finally open. We were once a part of schools that had ICN, and we were going to hang out in that team room for the tournament because we were “ICN Veterans,” as we called ourselves. I said a quick hello to one of the coaches in the team room, then ran downstairs to catch the start of the fourth round, leaving me breathless when we arrived back at the newly posted pairings.

For round four, we played a team made up of two girls. We quickly figured out that one was a third grader and the other was a fifth grader, but they were both around the same height. Indira was playing the fifth grader, and I was playing the third grader. We thought they might be inexperienced since they were quite young, but they also had a decent average rating so we decided not to be overconfident. Simone and Rose came over to wish us good luck before the games started, and we did the same.

Once the games started, we realized that our opponents were very amusing, and they were saying whatever was on their minds. We were trying not to laugh because they were chattering so much so confidently and everything they said seemed to be completely useless

“Do you want a pawn trade?” my opponent asked her friend.

“No, I don’t. I mean, maybe, but like, you don’t need to. If you want to. I don’t know,” Indira’s opponent responded

“Got it,” my opponent said. These interactions continued throughout the game, while Indira and I strategically whispered to each other, half about their commentary and half about the actual game.

“Do not trade queens,” Indira’s opponent told mine once she was in a bad position. “At any cost, do NOT trade queens. I swear to God, if you trade queens, I’m gonna kill you.”

“Don’t trade queens, got it,” my opponent said, suddenly jumping up in her chair and observing the board intently. “Don’t trade queens, at all costs, don’t trade queens, do NOT TRADE QUEENS!” Indira and I looked at each other, stifling laughter. I was not in a bad position but Indira was winning, and we figured out that our opponents did not know how to stall, which we used to our advantage. I somehow figured out a way to trade queens, which I knew would strongly benefit Indira, based on her position and her opponent being completely against it.

“Oh no…” my opponent started tentatively. “I kind of have to do a queen trade…”

“Ugh, no way.”

“I can try to avoid it… no, I can’t, I’m sorry, but I have to!”

“Ugh, fine.” Indira’s opponent said, rolling her eyes as I happily traded queens with my opponent.

“I’m sorry!” my opponent exclaimed, sounding like she felt very bad.

“I swear to God, I’m gonna kill you after this game,” Indira’s opponent kept repeating aggressively as her position slowly got worse and my opponent kept apologizing. My eyes widened in shock listening to our opponents talk to each other. Indira’s opponent’s threats to her teammate were so unreasonable and hostile, and I couldn’t believe that my opponent was listening to her without commenting on that. I was sympathetic towards my opponent, but Indira and I were so amused by the whole thing because it was so serious for such a small situation and it was not often that teammates talked so negatively with each other. Indira quickly beat her opponent with the queen, and we reset the board.

“I’m sorry!” my opponent repeated again.

“Ugh, it’s fine,” Indira’s opponent responded, clearly annoyed. “Don’t do it again next time.”

The next game started similarly, with them chattering away and us quietly whispering and strategizing. Halfway through, Rose and Simone came over to watch our games and immediately looked at us with amusement once they listened to the girls talking. Indira caught their eye and giggled quietly, which earned her a dirty look from one of our opponents.

“Ooooh,” Indira’s opponent said devilishly after seeing a move on the chess board. “I have a devious plot to win this game.” Simone stifled a laugh as her opponent played her move. “So devious.”

At the end of the game, we ended up losing and drawing the round against them. Our opponents started whispering to each other and looking at us and Indira as all four of us walked out of the tournament room, suddenly bursting into laughter.

“They were literally just saying whatever was on their mind!” Indira exclaimed, giggling.

“Did you hear her say ‘that’s my idiocy’?” Simone asked the rest of us. “Is that even grammatically correct?”

“My poor opponent,” I said sadly. “She had to deal with that much criticism from her opponent.”

“They’re not allowed to randomly talk during the game,” Simone said. Indira and I shrugged it off.

“It’s fiiiine,” I replied. “They were kinda talking about the game.” Indira looked at me with a sarcastic expression.

“Yeah, of course. Toooootally talking about the game,” she exaggerated.

“I’m going to tell the TD. They can’t just be constantly talking during the game and making threats like that,” Simone announced. We all immediately tried to stop her, but to no avail.

After a couple of minutes, we located the tournament director. Simone confidently strode up to him as Indira and Rose ran into the bathroom laughing, embarrassed.

“Hey, I just wanted to let you know that one team, they kept talking about stuff that was unrelated to the game, like they kept saying ‘I’m going to kill you after this’, and stuff like that,” Simone told him. The tournament director looked sympathetic towards the girls, but he acknowledged Simone’s complaint.

“Okay, it’s fine, thanks for letting me know,” he replied and then walked away. I ran into the bathroom to grab Rose and Indira, who were hiding because they didn’t want to be associated with Simone’s conversation.

“Guys, the TD is gone,” I told them. They breathed a sigh of relief, peeked out of the bathroom, and then went outside once they realized the coast was clear.

Once we got out, we saw our opponents from the last round, talking with each other as if the last round hadn’t even happened. I was quite surprised to see that they could get over such an argument so quickly.

We still had a while before our last round, which led to Indira stealing Simone’s chess bag, Simone chasing her to get it back, Rose on Indira’s side, and me just standing there watching the chaos unfold. Eventually, I helped Simone get her bag back, and the last round started.

We sat down in front of our last opponents. They were two girls who looked very similar, and they were a bit older than us, but to my surprise, they were actually two or three years apart in age.

We ended up quickly winning the first round against them, and for the second round, I had an attack on my opponent and Indira seemed equal. On Indira’s board, there was a queen trade that her opponent could do that would lead to her opponent winning a piece. However, the queen trade would lead to me immediately getting a checkmate. I was stalling because I was up on time, hoping that Indira’s opponent would see the trade to win the piece, not see what was happening on my board, and trade queens.

“Can I trade queens?” Indira’s opponent asked her teammate. Her teammate, or my opponent, looked dubious. She had probably seen the mate as well.

“I mean, I’m going to lose…” my opponent started.

“Queen trade? It’ll… be good,” Indira’s opponent said. My opponent hesitantly responded with “...sure” smiling nervously, and my heart soared as Indira’s opponent took the queen. Indira quickly took it back and handed it to me, and I immediately slammed it onto the board, causing checkmate after the next move.

“I lost,” my opponent said to her teammate, who looked at the board and then started looking sheepish.

“Oh,” she said. We called over the tournament director to report our win. I liked our opponents for that round because they seemed a lot less serious and competitive than some of the other opponents we had had. Despite their loss, our opponents were laughing and talking about the games with us.

“Wow,” Indira’s opponent said. “I’m such a bad teammate.” Indira and I chuckled along with our opponents at the joke, walked out of the hall, and immediately started celebrating our win.

“We did better than I thought!” I exclaimed excitedly. It was a tremendous improvement from my last experience, and honestly, not even counting that, I thought we did really well.

“Yes! Indiyaaas!” she replied. We met Simone and Rose, the Salkies, who had drawn their last round.

“We did so well!” Simone exclaimed.

“I know, right?” I agreed. “I didn’t expect me and Indira to actually not lose a bughouse game!”

Once everyone had finished the last round, we checked the results, and Indira and I had come in fourth place, with 3.5 points out of 5! Rose and Simone had also gotten 3.5 points, but they had received third place because of a tiebreaker. None of us had lost a round, we had all drawn three rounds and won two. First and second place had gotten 4 points out of 5.

The awards ceremony for bughouse and blitz was set to be the next day right before the rounds started. All four of us left the bughouse tournament in great spirits after doing well and played our first day of the Girls Nationals tournament, which for us was ramen for lunch, one game in the afternoon that we all won, and a fun pizza dinner at a restaurant with one of our other friends.

The next day, Simone, Rose, Indira, and I showed up at the tournament hall to receive our trophies. We arrived just in time because by the time we got to the tournament hall, they were finishing up the blitz prizes.

“Fourth place for the bughouse tournament goes to Uh-lee-ya Saldanha-Suri and Ind-eye-ra Raparthi, team Ind-eye-yahs, with 3.5 total points!” the announcer exclaimed, a bit confused on how to say our team name. Indira was in the bathroom, so I ran up to the stage to collect our trophies while everyone politely clapped. I went up to Rose and Simone and we quickly laughed about how they had totally butchered my and Indira’s names, which was normal, but more notably how they had pronounced “Indiyaaas,” which was hilarious to us.

“Third place goes to Simone Morden and Rose Morden, The Salkies, also with 3.5 total points!” Rose and Simone went up to take their trophies just as Indira made it to the tournament hall. I handed Indira her trophy, and we took a picture together, shortly joined by Rose and Simone to take another picture.

“Guys, we accomplished something!” I exclaimed, holding up my trophy as we compared the size of the fourth and third place trophies. “And it’s only the second day of the tournament!” 

“I know! Now even if we don’t do well, we can still show off our bughouse trophies,” Rose agreed.

“Yeah!” Simone exclaimed. “Just tell people we won a trophy in “chess” and everyone will be impressed!” We all laughed, overjoyed at receiving trophies and our overall bughouse performance.

We stood there chatting for a bit until the tournament director announced the start of the first round in a couple of minutes. Rose and I were playing each other.

“I’m going to keep my trophy here, just to intimidate my opponent,” Simone said, a twinkle in her eye. We all smiled at each other, wished each other good luck, and went to our boards.

Rose and I chatted for a bit before the tournament director started talking again.

“Hello everyone, this is round two of the tournament. Parents, please start exiting the room using the far door,” the tournament director spoke into his microphone. I handed my bughouse trophy to my dad to take back to the ICN team room. “Alright, you guys can shake hands and start your clocks.” I shook hands with Rose, started our clock, and settled down for round two of what would become one of the most enjoyable chess tournaments of my life.