The Beginning of a Great Adventure and King Safety and f2

  The five elements of bughouse:

1. King safety

2. Material

3.Strategy

4.Tactics 

5. Time

I would say that at the lower levels, everyone seems as if they are trying to disprove one of these principles.  At the higher levels, there is a lot of excellence in all of these.  Some players would include coordination.  I think that in general, my style requires less coordination.  I have decided to take a random game and show how these principles decide the result:

In this game, time was certainly a factor, but so was material and king safety.  We won on time in this position:



Black (on the left board) made a mistake early on.  Here he plays d6 instead of the necessary e6:

Here we trade pawns on d6.  I play Bc4 and he plays Be6.  This is another mistake.  He should play Qe7+ first.  Qe7 is often a great resource when the f-pawn is attacked.  Note that Be6 and the subsequent trade leaves c8 undefended:
Here he plays Qf6 instead of @f7.  Pawns are great for attack and defense.  Queens can be chased around:
Here he plays Q@g6.  I thought his best chance to defuse the attack was 1.Qxf7+ Rxf7 2.Q@e8+ Q@f8 3.Qxf8+.  I like my partner's attack on e3:

If I get more material, my attack can win.  If I don't get material, I am threatening Qxb7, and Black has a hard time repairing his position:


I win one queen and trade off the other won.  Black tries to start an attack.  I am pretty safe as long as I play Kf2 instead of Kg1.  This is a rare case where coming up is correct.  Note that my rook defends f2:

Black checks on b6 and takes my knight on f7.  My king is still pretty safe, and I can take on d8:

My partner now trades like mad for no reason. I make a mistake by playing @f4 which loses a pawn instead of @f3, which is safe.
Rxf3+ looks scary. If after gxf3, if he gets a knight, I can still run to e1.  He might sacrifice a queen or a rook on g2, but I think its a longshot:
He sacrificed a pawn on g3 to open up h2.  He checks from h2 and I block on g2.  Yes he is going to sacrifice his queen.  Meanwhile my partner is attacking again:
He sacrifices a pawn on h3 and I take it, which is a mistake.  If he gets a knight, he can play N@g5+ Kg2 Q@h3+ Kf7 Qxg3+, which isn't mate, but it's ugly:
He is now in time trouble.  He plays @g4 and I take.  He then plays B@e8, which it prevents me from playing Q@e8+.  I missed that I could also play Qf6+ next move.  Maybe Q@e7 was better for him:


So I play R@f3, not realizing that f6 is attacked enough times.  He plays Qh6+ and I play N@h5.  He has put another defender on f6, but I have put on another attacker:
He plays @f5 to defend.  I play Rxf5.  This is a crude move, and probably unsound, but I want to break through before my partner loses on time:


In time trouble, my opponent gives up the queen.  I am now threatening N@g5+:

Here I had the chance to play @g3+. He would have to either give up the rook and or lose tempo.  I am pretty safe because he only has the queen.  Finally my partner has more time:

So I put in the knight at g6 and he takes with the rook.  Then I take with the pawn.  It is in this position that he runs out of time:










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