Bongcloud Attack

BY GUY FLANDERS ARTING ILLUSTRATION BY STICKY

2021 is starting pretty alright. Phil Spector is dead, and the former president is lucky enough to have been impeached twice. That being said, I think literally everyone agrees that 2020 was a cursed abomination of a year and thanks the Lord Jesus Himself that it is gone and buried. Just to give you an idea of how backwards 2020 was, we lost: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, MF Doom, John Prine, Eddie Van Halen, Alex fucking Trebek, and Chadwick Boseman, just to name some famous ones.

But while plague and government incompetence ravaged our usual social order, chess experienced a boom in popularity. You can regularly find Grandmasters like Hikaru Nakamura, basically the American Magnus Carlsen, streaming on Twitch. To placate his viewers, and probably because chess would be boring to him otherwise, Hikaru regularly performs challenges like playing blindfolded, pre-moving each of his pieces (playing by guessing what his opponent’s next move will be), or by using the bongcloud attack.

Now I can almost hear you scream, “But what, praytell, is the bongcloud attack!?” The attack is one of, if not the, worst openings in all of chess. The origins are hard to find, but the name was likely the result of a 2010 satirical paper attributed to BM (Bongcloud Master) Andrew Fabbro. In the paper, he talks about it being the secret weapon of Ruy Lopez, a Spanish priest for whom one of the most popular chess openings is named. This is largely indicative of the hilarious material contained in the article. Andrew’s number one argument for playing the bongcloud attack? You’re high as a kite.

The opening itself is simple enough, pawn to e4 followed by pawn to e5. This is the most common opening move, for both black and white, in all of chess. Where things get interesting is white’s second move, which is to push the king forward to e2. This does a number of unique things, least of which is the “whaaaattttt?” you’ll get from your opponent. It prevents you from castling, the only time you get to move two pieces at once in chess, and a move built into basically every sensible opening. And your king is immediately exposed on two diagonals, which allows black to both develop their bishops AND attack your king.

BONGCLOUD ATTACK

ILLUSTRATION BY StiCky

Ok, so it has some downsides, but if someone as good as a Grandmaster plays it, it must have some good qualities, right? I mean, you’ll get more views on Twitch, and maybe confuse your opponent, but that’s a generous read of it. By now, even if you don’t play chess, you can imagine why using the bongcloud attack is a bad idea.

So, why actually do it? Well, if you’re Hikaru Nakamura, the restraint makes things more interesting—not more fair, as he still crushes people with this actively bad strategy, but more interesting, nonetheless. Think of it less as playing with an arm tied behind your back and more like having your legs bound in a foot race. Wouldn’t you pay to see Usain Bolt hop with his legs bound together faster than most could sprint?