Do you have questions about the direction 4 Player Chess took over a year ago? Do you have questions about why the Starting position was chosen, over better positions such as BY setup?Now's your chance to get your questions answered here:https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/variants-q-a
Nirvaan2017 Dec 11, 2023
when one player doesnt even make the first move no points should be given
wingfour Dec 2, 2023
You are 2nd? NO You can ask for points? NO Your remaining opps gives you some points? NO Your exchanges of pieces give you enough points? NO BUT Let's see my game! As you can see, I hoped my opp to have given me some points, let me be 2nd, due to my co-op with him before. However, he wanted to checkmate me straightly. I came up with an idea: "Go up with the resigner's king, and if the opp make wrong moves, I can checkmate it". Just have taken a look to my time and the opp's, my time was too low. Nevertheless, I thought I was able to change... Very surprising! We stalemated the dead. I got 10 pts and succeeded to get 2nd. Some advices: Don't resign if you can do anything! Don't be hasty to ask for points. It's not allowed If you have more time than the opp when the both's are low, try to disturb his pieces, and you can think to play for win. Let's chill!
thenomalnoob Nov 29, 2023
whenever I go to the variants lobby I cannot scroll down the game list and can only select from the games at the top; is anyone else having this problem?
ChessMasterGS Nov 27, 2023
I think the blocking system should be modified for 4pc. Say you blocked a person, I think in my opinion, and I think it should be applied, is that when you block someone. You can't play with the player anymore and you won't encounter them in games. This includes all varients of 4pc
rmschesser Nov 26, 2023
Can you add the following NCP? It is a revised version of Best Friends Forever. Pawns promote on the same rank for all players viewed from their perspectives. I wanted to play it rated.R-0,0,0,0-1,1,1,1-1,1,1,1-0,0,0,0-0-{'royal''h3','c7','g12','l8'),'lives'3,3,3,3),'dim':'10x10'}-x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x/x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x/x,x,x,x,x,x,yW,yF,x,x,x,x,x,x/x,x,x,1,yβ,yδ,yK,yP,yγ,yα,1,x,x,x/x,x,x,bα,6,gβ,x,x,x/x,x,x,bγ,6,gδ,x,x,x/x,x,bF,bP,6,gK,gW,x,x/x,x,bW,bK,6,gP,gF,x,x/x,x,x,bδ,6,gγ,x,x,x/x,x,x,bβ,6,gα,x,x,x/x,x,x,1,rα,rγ,rP,rK,rδ,rβ,1,x,x,x/x,x,x,x,x,x,rF,rW,x,x,x,x,x,x/x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x/x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x,x
ChessMasterGS Nov 26, 2023
Couldn’t create 4 colors. Someone please upload a correct image with a green and brown. I HEREBY PRESENT THE FINAL BLOW TO THE STAGNATION OF CHESS! READ TILL THE END IF YOU'VE A BRAIN IN YOUR SKULL! I strongly believe it would be worthwhile for Chess.com to add a real cooperative game feature to the App. There should be two boards attached side by side. IJKLMNOP squares will be added after the H squares. Four colors and four players. [White & green vs black & brown.] Top two are allied and bottom two are allied. If you lose your king you still play on with all your pieces so long as your allies' king is still on the board! There are countless new tactics and strategies available in this format, and the fun is tenfold for the co-op. You can hide your king in your allies' fort and go all out offensively while he plays defence, or you can launch a devastating attack together. You can castle near your ally in middle of the board, or on opposite sides. Like I've already said, if in check, you don't have to save your king if your allies' king is still alive. [You can deliver checkmate with your king.] If the teams' 2nd king is in check both players are forced to defend it by whatever means they have. He who goes first doesn't have to, if the second player can. Time is counted for the team, not the player. You can also message your ally what move to play. To suggest a move to your ally you simply press the squares and they get to see it as a suggestion. There could be a limit to how many suggestions are allowed. Suggestions and chat can also be turned off entirely in the settings when choosing the game, to make it more important who your ally is. In serious tournaments it will always be off. Friends can play together against opposing teams. When playing randomly you will automatically get teamed with someone at your rating. If one player resigns but his ally wishes to play on, a new player will take his place. The new player's rating isn't affected if he loses, but goes up if he wins. The options are limitless in what could transpire on such a board. A rook can fly 15 squares to save an allies' queen, and two kings can checkmate another. My knight takes a pawn and then my ally eliminates its defender [the fourth color] with his bishop. Or if you're in check, you move your bishop (and snatch a piece) freeing your allies rook to now shoot over and block it. Or maybe your ally has only a king. You haven't, and you're protecting it, hoping he makes the right move each time he's checked. If your allies' pieces are all eliminated, you may lose even if up substantial material, since they get two turns and you only one. For instance if you fork a king and knight, the forked knight simply checks you, and his ally then slides his rook to block your check even undefended. You must move your king or take the knight with your bishop, and your queen is lost. (In this format maybe pawns should also be able to promote to a king! It will still be used less than a queen, but far more than a knight. You're checkmated; but no, your ally promotes to a king on the far end of the board [p8 square]! Quickly send your forces to defend it. Allowing it may lower the value of the queen though so I'm not sure if it's a good idea.) Stalemate is only if the color with the only remaining king on the team cannot move. If you lose your king and are losing and your ally has only a king or blocked pawns, he runs for a corner and you surround him with your pieces to stalemate him. The enemy meanwhile tries everything to stop it. Before each move you must take into consideration the move order of the enemy. Super-GM's like Hikaru, Erigaisi, Niemann, and Keymer, could play against others. Once developing strategy and coordination with someone, you'll be far better with them than even with a higher rated player. You'll have to choose a buddy, and hone your skills with them. What if MAGNUS and HIKARU team up against NIEMANN and HANSEN!? Streaming online, Hikaru (chortling away) sacs Magnus's queen. ('Should I give Magnus's queen?' he asks, his hand on his rook, who'm he promptly sacs for the Han's knight, forcing Carlsen to sac his queen to save it and thus gaining a slight advantage.) In revenge, Magnus needlessly exposes Hikaru's king to Eric's bishop, upon which Hikaru bursts out laughing. A Hansen-Niemann vs Naka-Magnus game will easily be one if the greatest shows chess has ever seen. ADDING THIS FORMAT COULD LITERALLY DOUBLE THE USERS ON CHESS.COM IN JUST A COUPLE OF MONTHS! Its popularity would skyrocket, so many people joining just for the co-op. The excitement of such a game cannot be overstated. Piece setup and most game rules are the same as in regular chess; (unless maybe the bishops should start beside the Rooks, and the knights beside the kings and queens so that the bishops start off targeting a knight and rook instead of a king and queen. If knights-bishops do change places, right-side kings should maybe also start on the L squares and queens on the M, for several reasons.) Move order: either bottom left, bottom right, top left, top right, or clockwise from bottom right: (or [more complicated] bottom left, top left, bottom right, top right, or beggining from right; or even bottom, top, top, bottom, in any order.) Top GMs or engines should decide on which exact piece setup (I personally think it's preferable to keep the original setup; and move order: b-left b-right, t-left t-right; White, then green, then black, then brown.) and move order gives you the most playable options. There is so much room to improve chess. The greatest minds on the planet should be putting their heads to improve, expand, and promote the game just as they do to play it. Hikaru and Naroditsky should be asked on this variant. The rules don't have to be exactly as I layed out. They can change them slightly if it makes the gameplay and co-op better. Millions of new puzzles can be made. There's also no worries about cheating or theory in this format. Even just adding a co-op mode to regular chess is a great way to expand the game. The best way to add co-op to regular chess is to make that two people must agree in order for any move to be played. Any move you attempt is shown as a suggestion to your partner. If they second it, it goes. In low time, or if chosen, any of you can move, simply whoever goes first. A 2nd option is that every second move is traded off between the two, and a 3rd is that one picks the piece, the other moves it. IF YOU LIKE THE SUGGESTION, VOICE YOUR SUPPORT HERE AND NOW. IF NOT THE DEVS WON'T DELIVER. USE YOUR INFLUENCE AND MAKE IT HAPPEN.
linghanyang Nov 24, 2023
https://www.chess.com/variants/4-player-chess/game/58158148 I was playing teams and he resigned on move 2 for no reason and I lost 19 points. I think it should be he loses his amount of points (-0.5 which is the normal amount of leaving turn 1) and nobody else gains or loses like usual.
There are so few players for it any more. When I first joined two years ago you could get a Bullet game within minutes at any time throughout the day. Now they are rarer and rarer. I get why new players would avoid it, but why don't experienced players join it more? In my opinion it's the best version of the game, no long pauses/stalls and much more reliant on working with others. Blitz is fun, but even then there is lot of passive hoarding that makes games move slowly. And sitting for 3 minutes while someone flags is the absolute worst. For these reasons I don't even play the normal "Rapid" version. I just have too many other things I need to do throughout the day, so getting a game in here and there with the time I have lends itself perfectly to bullet. But alas, there are rarely any players... Thoughts?
chesswhizz9 Nov 20, 2023
[image removed by admin]* *Please report directly to admin and not publicly, thanks!
JkCheeseChess Nov 16, 2023
https://www.chess.com/variants/4-player-chess/game/58071682 Weird ending to a game... Not sure how that's suppose to play out, but I think if green doesn't resign red can win with double checks. Haven't run in to something like this yet, what is one supposed to do in this position?
Typewriter44 Nov 16, 2023
Everybody, I think we should start playing Wheel of Fortune arenas right now. It's fun, crazy and good! It's not about luck in 4 Player Chess, today 10/25/2023. 1 minute solo in 4pc with no bots, no lucks, about skills. Play it if you want to be the winner, it's solo, winner takes all, the losers, don't be sad, the next game will help you. Play until you become 1800! Wheel of Fortune - @sammy2013vn for all and @grable.
Darsh3415 Nov 11, 2023
bughouse chess with 4 players white & black vs. black& white
PikaBallFun594 Nov 9, 2023
Dude in FFA ok, two of the opponents are friends, they are guiding each other and checkmating me and the other. This is not fair. I have reported but chess.com is not looking at the case. Why is this? If anybody can help me with this, I would be grateful to you.
DoubleSpeedRocks Oct 30, 2023
When I go to 4-player chess I can only choose between Teams and FFA and I haven't seem solo games in a while
ChessMasterGS Oct 29, 2023
A beautiful scenario where 4 players are having same rating on the leaders. (I don't know why does it show 2936 to me and Luciano when we both are 2937)
MistakeEraser Oct 25, 2023
Since I started playing 4 player chess (4pc), I have always been curious about the impact of points in FFA. Every type of piece, the pawn/1 point queen, the knight, the bishop, the rook, the queen and the king, are worth different amounts of points. It is important to find the most correct values of each piece to make a balanced game. How have these numbers been reached? For a chess player, it is clear most of them come from 2 player chess (2pc). The pawn is the unit piece, so the piece values are measured in pawns. At the same time, the pawn is one of the most complicated pieces. The knight, rook and queen all have values corresponding to 2pc. However, it is not necessarily true that the values of the pieces are the same in 2pc and in 4pc. For example, the bishop is worth 5 points instead of 3, which is generally how much the bishop is worth in 2pc. Why? The qualitative explanation is that the board is bigger, so the bishop should be worth more than the knight. Translating the king value to 4pc is tricky because its value is infinite in 2pc. A more fundamental question: which factors decide the value of a piece? How powerful it is, you could say, which translated to chess terms is how many squares it generally controls. Controlling squares is all good, but it doesn’t win you any games on its own. You need to get points. So, the strength of a piece can be measured by its ability to grab points. With this in mind, we can go into the game itself to find out how much each piece should be worth. Let us for a moment not think about 4pc as a battle between 4 players, but rather a battle between 6 types of pieces. I would like to find an exact way to derive the correct piece values, based on mathematics instead of intuition. Perhaps the current piece values are based on some algorithm, but if so, I have never heard about it. Thus, I have tried to do it myself, using statistical methods. I have picked 30 high level FFA rapid/blitz games with a variety of players as a basis for my results. How can the value of a piece be described statistically? For example, why is the rook worth 5 points? Let us define the variable Expected Point Gain for each type of piece. I have decided to count the pawn and the 1-point queen as the same piece. Sticking to the same example, the rook being worth 5 points means that a rook is on average expected to capture 5 points. But that is not all. In FFA, a piece can turn grey instead of being captured, meaning that it does not give away any points. So, the definition also needs to have granted that it becomes captured. In total, that becomes The value of a piece is the expected amount of points that the piece will capture, granted that it becomes captured. Using this as a basis, I have made the following indicator: EPG(Expected Point Gain)=Expected Points Won – Expected Points Given Away. That is, for every one of those 30 games, I have gone through every single capture to see how much each type of piece has been able to capture and how much they have given away by being captured. Then I have taken the average over all the games and divided by the amount of the type of piece in the starting position(32 pawns, 8 knights etc), to get the EPG. In general, if the EPG is close to 0, it implies the piece is worth its value and balanced. If the EPG is very big, the piece takes more than it gives away, so the piece could be worth more. If the EPG is negative, the piece is probably worth too much. That is the general theory, here is an example to make things clearer: let us say the EPG of the rook is 2. That means that on average, the rook takes 2 more points than it gives away, which implies that the rook should be worth more than it is currently. It does not necessarily mean that the rook needs to be worth exactly 2 points more = 7. Why? Two reasons: it is a complex system consisting of 6 different pieces with one EPG each, and they are dependent on each other. Changing the value of one piece will affect the EPG for other pieces, it is a compromise. The second reason is that the value of pieces affects how we play with them. Changing the value of the rook from 5 to 7 would for instance make a rook for bishop trade less tempting. The numbers found are indicators. To clarify, here is one of the 30 games: So, we can see that there are 3 numbers for each type of piece. “Won” means how many points that type of piece has captured, “Given Away” is the amount of times that piece has been captured times its value. And then the “Gain” is simply the difference. Feel free to go to the game and see if I have counted correctly. 😉 A couple of things to note: the king has a very negative score and that is completely normal. How often do you see a king capturing 20 points worth of material? Anyhow, that is beside point, the king is supposed to be a bonus piece, you get a bonus reward for “capturing” it. Other things that meet the eye is that the queen scores very well and the rook scores very badly, but it is only one example so we cannot draw any conclusions from it. You might wonder why the total score is -40 and not 0. The reason is that very often, at the end of a game, there are one or several kings left that have not been checkmated, so the kings give away 20 points each without being captured. Another element that could lead to strange total scores is double checks, but over the course of the 30 games double checks have been quite rare. If you have read everything so far, you are probably curious to see what my experiment has yielded. The knowledgeable reader might have an idea or two about the results already. Here are the EPGs I have found: A bunch of different values have been calculated; these are the ones I consider the most important. I decided to add the amount of checkmates for reasons you will see later. Let’s go through each piece separately. Knight With an EPG of 0.1, it seems like the knight is doing fine at 3 points. Bishop Despite its ability to develop fast and point straight at an enemy flank player, with a score of -0.9 it is clear that the bishop is not worth 5 points. Setting it down a point or two should be considered. Rook The rook scores close to 0 and seems balanced currently. King The king is by far the piece with the worst score, which is understandable as the king is not designed to be worth its value. Whether or not that is a good idea, I will not discuss that here. What this analysis can show is how the bonus points that you get from checkmates/capturing kings are distributed among the other pieces. Queen 4.1 is much farther away from 0 than anything seen so far. It implies that the queen should be worth several points more than it currently is, which is strange considering that 9 points is balanced for the queen in 2pc. Having gone through the games and looked at what happens, the high score of the queen can be seen to be caused by the value of the king. In the games, the queen takes 54 % of all checkmates, and 30 % are dealt by pawns/1-point queens (read: queens). That leaves only 16 % of all checkmates for non queen types of pieces and contributes to making the queen look like an unbalanced piece. Pawn Scoring 0.7 for the pawn might look innocent, but it is not! Remember, this number applies to every single one of the 32 pawns on the board. Every pawn is expected to capture 0.7 points more than it gives away. The main reason is how powerful 1-point queens are and how often pawns get promoted in FFA. But I believe there is reason to think that pawns by themselves are more powerful in 4pc than in 2pc. In 2pc there is less space for pawns to move, you easily get blocked pawn structures where the pawns are immobile. In 4pc pawns are very mobile and thus much easier to promote. Blocked pawn structured are usually only seen on the flanks. The impact is devastating; as the pawn is defined as the unit value, instead of increasing its value we would have to divide the value of all other pieces by 1.7. Then knights would be 2 points, bishops and rooks 3 and queens 5. And the king? Who knows. I would also like to share the results of an identical analysis of a format I have made myself, the chaturaji hyper fiesta. The only difference is that I have used 15 games instead of 30. The game looks like this: The rules are Capture the King, 3 points for kings, promotion into (5-point) rook on the 8th rank and ¼|0 hyper bullet time control. The Expected Point Gain of the pieces are the following: We can see that these numbers are all looking close to 0, at least compared to normal FFA. The pawn looks balanced. The bishop underperforms the most, which I think is understandable. It is worth 5 points, the same as the rook. But with a normal 8x8 chess board, one would think that the piece values should be the same as in 2pc. That’s why I would like to ask our developers to add the possibility of adjusting piece values for different variants. Knights do well, maybe because they often get to trade with 5 point bishops. Rooks do ok, underperforming a bit. Could be because it's hyperbullet. Kings do much better than in normal FFA, helped by its reduced value and the ability to sacrifice itself for another piece. They still underperform a little bit, which I believe is due to the fact that the last man standing gets the points for all remaining kings. To conclude, I think there are several reasons to believe that the current point system in FFA is inaccurate. Queens, whether they are worth 9 points or 1 point, are the supreme rulers of FFA. Pawns are powerful. Kings and bishops are point donators. Rooks and knights are the only pieces that seem to be worth their price. For variants with different board sizes, I think we should have the option of adjusting the value of each piece. Questions and comments are much appreciated. Is it easy to understand how the experiment has been conducted, and why it has been conducted in this particular way? Do you think this method is useful for evaluating the strength of the pieces? Is there something you would have done differently? Is there any step in the process that is unclear? Do you agree or disagree with my interpretation of the results?