Four player free-for-all chess: a complete guide

If you clicked on this blog, chances are you like four player chess. This guide is a summary of a number of principles that will help you win at four player free-for-all chess. It covers a large range of the main strategic principles of the game. All the tips are based on my opinion after playing almost 500 games, reaching a peak rating of 2700. Keep in mind that other players may have a different style, and there are still much higher rated players than me, so take them with a grain of salt.

Of course, since we are talking about a chess variant, getting good at normal chess and knowing its principles, like developing pieces, calculating ahead, positioning, and time management will naturally also make you better at four player chess. These will not be discussed in this guide.

You will not win every game after reading this guide; however, I hope that, after reading this guide, you will know what to pay attention to. In real games often different principles will clash with each other, and much of the skill of a player lies in evaluating which principle is the most important at which moment.

The guide is divided into sections, going from basic to more advanced, with indications for which rating range they are the most relevant. Examples are taken from my own games, but have been anonymized. 

The basics (1000+):
Before starting with the chess tips, the most important principle must be mentioned: be respectful! This is a free-for-all game, meaning that people can make any moves they want. It is possible that you perceive some move as bad move or betrayal, but often this may just be what they considered their best chance of winning. In the end: use the game as a means to connect to people. That being said, never throw away the game on purpose, as it ruins the fun for others. Now we can get to the ‘how to win’-part!

Playing chess on the four-player chess board is quite different from normal chess. It is very big, making it easy to lose track of what is happening. You can draw arrows and highlight squares with the right mouse button, this can help a lot with keeping track of threats, checks and captures.

Just like in regular chess, it is very important to develop your pieces. You cannot score points if your pieces are not ready for the action! Especially the queen and the bishops are good attackers in the opening, since they aim at your neighbors.

One of the most important principles in free-for-all chess is the rule of two attackers: if two players are each attacking a piece of yours, you cannot defend both! For this reason, it is very advantageous to temporarily work together with other players to win material.

In the above position, yellow is threatening blue’s pawn and knight. If red plays their pawn to f6, blue cannot defend all the threats, so red or yellow will win a piece.

In general, you should avoid making too many trades. Most of the time, the winner of the game is the last (wo)man standing. If you trade too much, you will have very little pieces at the end, and then you would not be able to win a 1v1 against the remaining player!

Advanced basics (1700+):
Now it is time for a slightly deeper dive into the rule of two attackers. This rule shapes the way the game is played, both in offense and defense. 

First of all, when you develop your pieces, you should try to put your pieces on squares where they attack other pieces. In this way, you will be ready to play combinations with other players that let you win material. Timing when to take or attack a piece is very important: you want to take pieces at a moment when another player also has an attack available on them. For that reason, sometimes it can be wise to wait with giving a check or attacking a loose piece until the right moment.

In the position above, the two blue bishops are excellently placed, attacking yellow. This allows blue and green to play the highlighted combination, winning both of them a piece.

Defensively, because of the rule of two attackers, you have to be very careful. Most of all, avoid any checks. If you see that any of your opponents can check you, prevent it, because getting checked will very often lead to you losing a piece or worse. Secondly, avoid having undefended pieces: because if you have two undefended pieces, and two players each attack one of them, you will lose a piece.

In free-for-all chess, checkmating attacks are much more deadly than in regular chess. There are many more checkmating patterns possible with multiple players, and because of the rule of two attackers, your defenders can be eliminated quickly if you are not careful. 

Unlike normal chess, castling usually does not make your king safer! It will only get your king closer to your opponent. Often, the king is safe enough in the middle, as long as there are no checks and you surround it with a couple pieces for protection. In general, try to only castle if your neighbor does not have any pawn breaks available next to your king.

In the above example,  yellow decides this is a good moment to castle queenside: everything is defended on that side, there is a knight and a bishop defending the king, and the highlighted green pawn acts as an umbrella pawn. However, yellow should be careful for the highlighted pawn break from green, in the same way that green should be careful for the pawn break from red. Reds king is the safest in the middle, while blue did very well castling without allowing any pawn breaks.

A common temptation for newer players is to try and immediately make a queen in the opening. However, this is not a good habit. It might work in lower rated games, but will be punished severely against strong opponents. The first moves are very critical, and it is much better to spend your time developing and defending against possible threats. If you see one of  your neighbors do this, this should tell you that it will be easy to coordinate an attack on them, since they have not developed anything.

The four player stage (2000+):
So… you might have looked around the four player chess website, and discovered this strange game mode called… ‘teams.’ You may have only tried one or two games in the teams mode, or you played it even more than free-for-all. Why are we discussing this completely different game? Well.. it turns out that the two game modes are secretly the same! At least, at the beginning of the game. 

As players have figured out over time, it is very advantageous to work together with the player on the other side of the board (we call this ‘your opposite’). It is much easier to coordinate attacks in this way, it prevents you from getting last, and if one of your neighbors is eliminated, this gives you a positional advantage (this is discussed in more detail in this forum).

This is the second main principle, the rule of the opposite: You should almost always work together with your opposite at the start of the game. This usually lasts until one of your neighbors is eliminated or very weak. Then it is no longer necessarily good to help your opposite: if your opposite is stronger than you and you help them, they can defeat you in a 1v1, and you will get second place. The main exception to the rule of the opposite is when your opposite becomes so strong, that they might be able to win a 3v1 against everyone else. 

Summarizing, in 99% of the cases, you should help your opposite, and never take any of their pieces. Playing some games in the teams mode helps greatly to become familiar with openings and common tactical patterns with your opposite.

In the above position, blue and green win material by working together: First, green takes the red bishop on j2, stopping the attack on the blue queen. Next, blue can take the yellow knight on f12 with check, so yellow does not have time to take the green queen.

It is often very good to checkmate one of your neighbors. It will give you and your opposite a favorable position in three player stage, since you have one less neighbor to worry about. It also makes it easier to promote pawns, since on that side there is no one to stop them. Of course, if you have the option to do so safely, it is better to take someone’s pieces first for points, before checkmating them!

In this position, red and yellow can team up to checkmate green, to get a good position in the three-player stage. Moreover, yellow gets 20 points for this, and red can take yellow’s queen for 9 points, making it advantageous for both.

It can be tricky to become familiar with the rule of the opposite, especially when playing with players from the range 2000-2300, since at this level not everyone will play following this principle. You may want to spend the first few moves testing your opposite. However, do not be afraid of trusting them: even if they take a piece of yours, knowing if you can trust them is worth much more than a piece!

Another point of caution is to not overcommit to teaming with your opposite. In the teams mode, it is often good to sacrifice some pieces for a checkmating attack. But if you sacrifice too many pieces in free-for-all, or you give opposite a free checkmate without getting anything back, this could give your opposite a big advantage, or ruin your own winning chances.

In the above position, blue and green have launched a very successful attack on red. However, blue had overcommitted a bit. Blue has traded their queen and bishops in the attack, while green was more careful. As a result, green has a lot of pieces left, and they get plenty of time to checkmate red. So green has a big lead, both in points and in material.

The three player stage: diplomacy (2300+)

If one player is checkmated or has almost no pieces, we enter the three player stage. If you reach this stage: congratulations! You are now one step closer to winning the game. But how do you win? 

First, you need to know how to avoid losing. It is time to look at the third main principle of free-for-all chess: the rule of the balance. This rule says: if there is one player who has enough material to have a chance of winning the 1v2 against the others, the other two players MUST attack them. The reason is clear: otherwise you both lose the game. This is explained in some more detail in this forum. The same can also be true if one player has a lot more points than the others, but this will be discussed later. 

The easiest way to win in the three player stage is to let the other players attack each other, until they have traded all their pieces. If you successfully get into a position with more pieces than the others, time is of the essence: try to quickly checkmate a weak player or win pieces to maintain your advantage. If you are not quick enough, the other players will team on you and you will lose your advantage. If you notice that you end up in a 1v2 you cannot win, try to trade as many pieces as possible to avoid losing too much, and to try and stop players from attacking you.

In this position, blue has a big lead in material. To prevent getting teamed on, blue decides to trade the bishops. Now yellow cannot attack blue for a couple of moves, giving blue the time to launch an attack on green with great winning chances.

 Of course, the better your opponents are, the less you will be able to trick them into attacking each other, but there are some methods that help.

Even more than in the four player stage, you should keep all your pieces defended. In particular, avoid allowing any checks for as long as possible. Doing this makes it much more attractive for other players to attack each other. It is often worth it to sacrifice a piece just to open up someone’s king or to keep your own king defended. A nice trick that sometimes works if your neighbour is eliminated, is to put your king inside the dead pieces to shield it from checks.

During the three player stage, you should look for ways to temporarily work together against one player. If you want to team on someone, make your intentions obvious. Do not take pieces or make threats against a player you want to work with, instead make moves that clearly attack the third player. Also, if you want to work with someone, keep their interests in mind: give them something to play for, by allowing them to get some points, make queens, or improve their winning chances in some other way.

In the above position, yellow has a very nice position: they have the most points, a very safe king, and the option to promote a number of pawns. Blue is not very strong, and therefore wants to work together with red to attack yellow. Obviously, it is not allowed to say this in the chat. Instead, blue communicates this with their moves: instead of taking the red queen that is hanging, they push their own pawn forward to where it can obviously be taken. This communicates very clearly: ‘I give you a queen, and if you let me make a queen we will attack yellow,’ and this is exactly how the game continued from here.

If you are attacking, only attack one player at a time, and do not switch targets too often. Otherwise you will likely turn both other players against you, which will let you lose material.

Do not make queens too quickly, to prevent getting teamed on. Sometimes having an advanced pawn is better than having a queen: once you promoted, you cannot go back, and with a pawn you can choose the right moment to promote. Also, as a rule of thumb, never have 3 or more queens, you will very likely lose them because of teaming.

Always be on the lookout for checkmates. Even at the highest level, there are countless games that are decided by a checkmate in 1 that someone missed. If you are down on points, it can be wise to not attack people their kings at all, since you will lose on points if another player steals your checkmate. But keep in mind: with ideal play, two players should not team up to checkmate a player. Never* launch a checkmating attack on a player assuming that the third player will help you, because they will only help you if it is winning for them!

*There are very rare cases where one player is way too strong and there is no other way to attack them, see example below

In the above position, we see one of the rare cases where it is good for two players to checkmate the third player. Blue has an overwhelming material advantage, and can easily checkmate yellow or red if given the chance. There are no easy checks on blue, so red and yellow cannot easily win blue’s queens. Yellow just played Qf10+, which forces red to take the checkmate, since red can’t allow blue to take yellows queen. This puts red in a slightly worse endgame with some more points, which gives them much better chances than the current position. (note: for the sake of argument, I ignored here that red has an even better move: Qb4+! This does not checkmate blue, but starts a long and complicated attack on blues king)

Most of all: be patient. If you play good players, there will only be a few opportunities. If there is no obvious move, use the time to improve your position, defend pieces, etc. It might even be worth it to shuffle your pieces a bit just to see what other players are trying to do. It is better to focus on having a good position than to focus on defeating other players (and also more fun for the other players).

Always pause before checkmating or playing a move that allows checkmate. In these cases, evaluate if it is possible to win the 1v1 that would follow. Likewise, in a three-player endgame, pause before you take a piece. Evaluate if taking this gives the win to the third player or if this hurts your winning chances in some other way. At the highest level, you will even see players ‘hang’ pieces, because they know that they cannot be taken.

Sometimes you may find yourself in a bad position where you have very little material and the other two players are strong. Then in particular you should be very patient, keep everything defended and wait until the other players have traded enough pieces until you start taking more risks again. Still, you should always have a few pieces ready to attack the strongest player if one player gets too strong. Comebacks are very possible, even if you only have one pawn left. Never resign in the three player stage!*

*There is one exception, this is discussed in the next section

Three player stage: points (2600+)
Summarizing the previous section, in the three player stage you can try to win by becoming stronger than the other players, or by a well-timed checkmate. However, both of these require another player to make a mistake: either they attacked the wrong player, or they blundered a checkmate. Now we look at what happens if no player makes such a blunder.

If all players keep the game balanced until the very end, this means the game ends by lack of material, repetition or the 50-move rule. In all these cases, the player with the most points wins! So in order to win the game, you need to keep this in mind from the beginning, and look for ways to score points. 

In the four-player stage, if you are working together well with your opposite, this changes how the game is played: instead of going for a quick checkmate on a weakened neighbor, you might try to take their pieces first. You might even stop attacking a player to avoid giving your opposite a free checkmate! You will also see players switch the attack from one neighbor to the other, trying to gain as many points from the cooperation with their opposite as possible. 

Another strategy to gain slightly more points is to try and attack the person on your left. This holds both for the four-player stage and the three-player stage. The reason is turn order: if a player you are teaming with gives a check or makes a threat on the player to your left, this gives you the opportunity to gain a free piece! It is also advantageous for checkmates. If a player is checkmated in the four-player stage, it is usually done by the player to their right.

If you find yourself in a balanced three-player scenario, the most obvious way to gain points is by (coordinated) attacks on other players. However, there is nothing wrong with making trades to gain some points. If there is no possibility to attack, it can also be profitable to exchange 1-point queens for pieces. The advantage of this is also that you will look like less of a threat to other players. Of course, you should still be careful with making too many trades. You should not become passive or disturb the balance.

The final method to gain points is through double checks. Especially in long three-player endgames, it is almost always good to give a double check. It is a free point, and does not cost a tempo since the other players must react to it. This is also yet another reason to keep your king shielded from checks as long as possible.

In the three-player stage, your strategy should not only depend on the position, but also on the amount of points each player has. There are a few ways that players can use their point lead to win the game in ways that do not break the balance. This is where the ‘claim win’ feature becomes important: if there are two players, and one player is more than 20 points above the other, they can claim the win! To finish this guide, let’s look at the most common point distributions, and how they affect the game.

The first scenario is the 2.5-player game: there are two players (A and B) with a lot of material, and one player (we will call them player C) has resigned or has almost no material left. If player A has more points than player B, this means they can win by checkmating player C! This mean that player B must always be ready to prevent this, by always having pieces ready to snipe the checkmate if the first player tries to checkmate player C. If you are up by 20 points or more, you can also instantly win the game by stalemating player C!

In the above position, green is trying to win by checkmating yellow. Do you see how blue can prevent this?

The second scenario is the equal three-player stage, where all three players have about the same number of points. In this case, the player with the most points gains two advantages. The first advantage has to deal with checkmates: if they are able to get a checkmate on any player, they instantly win the game. This means that they can launch an attack on someone’s king without worrying too much about checkmate, while the other players have to be more careful (this depends of course also on the material of players). The second advantage they gain is that the 50-move and threefold repetition rules are on their side. The player with the most points has the freedom to shuffle their pieces endlessly without worrying about points (also here, there could be other things to worry about, so this is not always good to do). In positions where nobody has a good improving move, this means that the other players are forced to take initiative.

If you find yourself being down a few points in an endgame, it is important to realize you cannot win by keeping the game balanced. You need to create some material imbalance and try to checkmate someone, or give double checks in order to win.

The third scenario is where one player has a lead of at least 40 points over the other two players. Let’s call them player A. In many cases, player A has the potential to win… by resigning! If player A resigns, the maximum number of points any other player can get is 40 points for two checkmates, plus the pieces of their remaining opponent. If there are little pieces left, this means that player A can guarantee the win in this manner.

If you find yourself being in player A’s shoes, you should keep a close eye on the exact scores to calculate if you have a guaranteed win. Never resign before you are sure! If there are still many pieces in the game, use all tricks possible to gain even more points. Make as many trades as safely possible with both players, to gain points and remove material from the board. It is also worth checking if autoresign is on. This game option forces player who cannot win to resign, and this can sometimes allow you to resign a bit earlier.

If you see that another player has a lead of 40 points or more, you should try to team up on them to gain more points and prevent them from gaining too many points. Another option is to trade a few pieces with the other player, to decrease the point lead of player A.

The final scenario is the most complicated one. We have one player, who we call player A, who has the most points. Another player, who we call B, has slightly less points than A, the exact amount is not relevant. The third player, player C, is behind player A by more than 40 points. In this scenario, player A has a very strange method to win the game. Player A can trade all their pieces with player B, and let player C checkmate them both. This will give the win to player A, since player C is too far behind in points. Let’s look at an example.

In the position in the picture, green takes the blue bishop on a9 with their rook! This gives them 64 points, which is 49 points more than yellow. Since blue has only 2 points of material, yellow can gain at most 42 points if green resigns. In this game, green was wise enough to still wait some more moves before resigning, and they won the game.

Just like in the previous case, player A should be very careful to not resign too quickly and always count the points on the board carefully. In this case, there are two extra factors to consider. First of all, you cannot resign if autoresign is on, since player C will resign automatically after you resign; you have to stay in the game and avoid double checks. Secondly, it is often possible for player C to let player B win the game if they choose to do so. The only way to prevent this is to take all of player B’s pieces and make sure you also have a large enough lead on player B.

If you find yourself in the shoes of player B, you are in big danger. If you see that player A is trying to win in this way, there are two ways to address this. First of all, you should try and coordinate an attack on player A. If player A has less pieces, they can score less points. Also, if you get a higher score than player A, or if player C gets within 40 points of player A, this forces player A to change their strategy. The second method is to trade pieces with player C. This will also bring you both closer to player A’s score. You could even consider ‘blundering’ pieces to player C in case of emergency. Next to that, you should buy time for player C to score: make checks on player A, and avoid trades with them.

If you are in the shoes of player C, you need to score points quickly. Trade pieces and attack player A, or take free pieces from player B so A can’t get these points. Try and gain time for player B to avoid trades by giving checks and making threats on player A.

If you made it this far: thank you for reading this guide! I hope these tips are helpful for your games. And remember what is worth more than a queen: you!