Played this once, the main drawback being that once a player was checkmated on one board, their arsenal for the second board was stunted. The player delivering the first checkmate also had a stunted arsenal, as no more pieces were incoming.
3 Player Bughouse Chess - Poke holes in this idea
Sort:
So I run a chess club at a small high school and the other day we tried a 3-person variant that I thought up modified from bughouse chess. I'm curious if anybody has any feedback, suggestions, thoughts on this and its fairness.
3 players have 3 boards set between them. Each player playing white on one board and black on the other. Every time a piece is captured by a player on one board, it becomes a pocket piece in the arsenal of the other board. Games are played simultaneously at their own pace, however a game cannot be stalled to wait for a piece from the other game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bughouse_chess
On your move, the pocketed piece may be placed on any unoccupied square in lieu of moving another piece. The piece can block or deliver checks and checkmates. Promoted pawn that are captured are pocketed as pawns. Pawns cannot be placed on the first or last ranks.
A checkmated player forfeits their arsenal to the checkmating player, but none of the pieces remaining on the board serve any function. The winner is the player with the most checkmates, given a tie, the first checkmater is the victor.