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The points system has caused much confusion. We've seen multiple posts from people wondering why they didn't win when they were the last man standing, or complaining that they should have won. And it's true: the points system is not the way you would intuitively expect a four-player game to work. On the other hand, we do need some incentive for people to come out and fight instead of sitting back in a defensive position and waiting for everyone else to fight; otherwise you have a boring game where everyone just shuffles their pieces back and forth. Despite its drawbacks, the points system provides that. However, I have an idea that is easy to understand, easy to implement, would eliminate the points system and allow us to go back to last-man-standing, while still creating a significant incentive to come out and fight. As an added benefit, I think it even disincentivises teaming (except for temporary cooperation as demanded by the position on the board). 1. No more points. The winner is the last man standing. 2. No more check and checkmate. You can move your king into check, or leave it in check; you would rarely do so deliberately, but it would be legal, and there would be rare situations where you might want to do so (I'll explain that below). 3. You are not eliminated until your king is captured. 4. And the key change: when you capture someone else's king, you take control of their remaining pieces. If red captures blue's king, on red's next turn, they can move either a red piece or a blue piece, as they are now combined into a single army. However, the pieces should retain their original colour to indicate which direction the pawns can move (but perhaps they should be given hats or something to indicate who now controls them). This creates an incentive for aggressive play: if red loses half his army taking blue out and kills half of blue's army in the process, the combined army will still be very substantial. Additionally, if you take out your neighbour, your strong control over one corner of the board will potentially make it easy for you to promote several pawns in quick succession. This also disincentivises teaming (except on a temporary basis as demanded by the position on the board): if red helps green take blue down, he's just helped green get a powerful army that will soon be used against red. Red might work with green to weaken blue if blue is too powerful, but will be careful about pushing it until blue is eliminated as he doesn't want to strengthen red. A typical game will probably see one player eliminated relatively early, with the other three gradually wearing each other down until you get into a 3-man endgame, and whoever is better positioned in the endgame will win; however, 2- and 3-way draws will not be unheard of. Having your neighbour eliminated will be good for you in the endgame if you have any pawns left on that side of the board, thus increasing the incentive to try to take out one of your neighbours early in the game. Thoughts? P.S. As for the situation where you might deliberately move into check, here are two possible scenarios: 1. Player 2 is in check from Player 3. Player 1 can safely move into check from Player 2, as Player 2 must save his own king. 2. Player 1 deliberately moves into check from Player 3. Player 2 does not want Player 3 to take over all of Player 1's pieces, so he must intervene. The only way he can intervene is to put Player 3 in check, and the only way to put Player 3 in check is to sacrifice his queen for one of the pawns in front of Player 3's king. Thus, Player 1 has put his king in danger to force Player 2 to give up his queen, while opening up Player 3's king in the process. Of course, that could backfire if Player 2 thinks he can take on Player 3 even if he controls Player 1's pieces.

This was a couple days back, so numbers may not be exact. I had one opponent left (green), who was down to a King but led by 10 points. After a hard-fought battle, I could relax and get an easy checkmate. I queened my last pawn, put green into check (mate in 1), then, as planned, green made the only possible move, and then... Boom. Game over. Green was awarded 20 points (and the win). This seems counter-intuitive, to say the least! So far, it's the only rule of 4-player chess that has really thrown me for a loop. It seems to me that the stalemate rules ought to be: * Only stalemate if player cannot move on his/her turn. * Getting stalemated = +20 points for you Even if there's a rationale for the "instant reward for moving into stalemate" when there are 3 or 4 players (which I also don't really understand, to be honest), I feel it's an outright horrible rule once only 2 players remain. TL;DR: 2 queens vs. 1 king should not be this tricky to win!!

Just spectated a game which came down to one king, one pawn and one rook left each, all in the middle of the board. Neither player seemed to know how to finish the game - they spent a while giving rook checks apparently aimlessly, Their chat was disabled already so they couldn't discuss a draw. Eventually one blundered and lost. In their positions I wouldn't have known what conditions would cause a draw to be agreed automatically (repetition? perpetual check? insufficient material?) - are there any rules on the server to tell us? How can you offer a draw with, or without, chat?

Stalemates are considered checkmate in 4 player chess and are therefore non-existent. However, we recently found out that a player that stalemates themself will receive +15 points (e.g. for checkmating themselves). I actually like that as it makes it rewarding to be stalemated (just like in standard Chess). Let me know what you guys think? See the image below:

Okay, so this has come up a bunch of times, let's have a good ole discussion. It seems like a lot of people (me included) agree that to get the 20 points, you should have to actually capture the king, not put it in mate position. There are two options to make this work, game design wise: First off, you only get 20 points when you capture a king, combined with either: 1) No checks, you can still move when in check or even mate 2) If a player is put in mate position, they get force-resigned EDIT: as noted below, for option #2 to work, you probably want to reward any leftover kings on the board to the last player standing. I personally prefer option two, it makes the most sense. If I mate someone, their pieces turn grey, except for the king. I only get the 20 points upon capturing the king. This fixes a whole host of current game problems, where people will get into really complicated mating situations that grind the game to a halt, because they are fighting over who gets the mate. Instead, it should be a royal scramble over who gets the king. Let's discuss at length just this part before we tackle other things like the point system, I think it's a separate issue.

I just had an endgame where I'm closely first (60 for me, 59 for second place, 56 for third place). Second place ended up stalemating third place, and I lost the endgame, making me end up third. I was expecting to end up second place, because I was low on material and there weren't enough pieces for third to overtake me. The stalemate made me come in third place. I don't agree that being stalemated when there are 2 or more players left is a draw. It should be a loss. Of course, my preferred fix for this is that you can't mate people, only king capture (with players being force-resigned if they can't legally move anymore), as noted in other topics.

I think there should be different variants for 4 player chess.

just the pawns, curious what that would look like

Currently if a player resigns or flags his king stays on the board as a +20 prize. Other players compete to capture it. My suggestion is: The king (only the king, not the gray army) should be controlled by simple AI. And this AI should move the king in random directions. The moves should be legal (the king should not step under a check) and that king should not capture any alive pieces. This way that king becomes more difficult target. Not just a pile of gold laying on some square. I understand that the developers need to spend some time to make the AI. But this is quite a simple task: 1. Add 8 squares around the king to the list. 2. Remove the squares with any alive pieces from that list. 3. If some squares are attacked by some alive piece of any player - remove them too. 4. If 1 or more squares left in the list then select one of them randomly and move the king to that square. This is the algorithm.

I was spectating a game and these people were acting weird. VincentRoberts: hello? VincentRoberts: HI VincentRoberts: HI eleyo: vincent whats your number? VincentRoberts: what do you mean vahagshabani: he wants to take you out on a date dongtae: ye hes gay for you eleyo: gonna call the cops on you Can you help with people who act like this?

It would be a real nice feature to allow opponents to contact after each game, as well a history of the games, if ever someone desires to share how they enjoyed that game instead of not recalling what their username was fully since you only get one lousy minute of optioned time before your history yourself. lol Sometimes I will hit on their avatar to pop another screen but, again, with only 1 measly minute ( massive hint ) it can start chewing the time, especially if you wish each of the 3. Please take into consideration?

I've had two games now where I resigned when there were two players left (for score purposes) and I didn't get a rating increase. Could this be a bug or is there a new rule I don't know of?

1. Bug: Currently if you type some text in chat and use the "left arrow" key (keyboard) to move the cursor back it affects the board rewinding the moves. So, the focus is not in the chat window, but on the board. Please fix it. 2. Suggestion: I recall that in Team Mode you need to type /team before messages. This is very inconvenient. I suggest to make 2 separate chat windows instead. The top one for the team chat and another at the bottom for the general chat.

Has chess.com considered adding 3 player chess? The movement of the pieces is slightly complicated but it isn't too hard to learn. If you checkmate someone you win, the checkmated player loses and the other player gets second. It's really fun.

This game is much fun, but it can easily go sour if you haven't built some defense! Since I began making a strategy, having my Knights out to begin with Queen's Pawn I've won 3 or 4 games!! If you just run up to grab your Queen the experienced opponents are going to chew you down with their Bishops, that happens too often. Get those Knights out, Castle if possible, then move your Queen side Pawns up for promos! ",

Is anyone else having issues with not getting all your points it says you won? Twice now I have been screwed massive points. Yesterday I was at 1226 and supposedly won 117 but next game it said 1261 (1226 + 117 = 1343, cutting me 82 points), and just now supposedly had won 96 points but it only raised 30 points! It's bad enough watching you who just built it up only to lose it all the very few games, but I certainly should be getting what I have won dagnabit! lol Can this be checked, worked on, my points GIVEN TO ME that didn't register? That sucks!

I really like tournaments and 4 player chess too so I think there should be 4 player chess tournaments

The chat is often used for teaming and that makes lots of players mad. Many players use /stop-chat command. Others want to communicate, because (quotation): "it is a part of the game". Ok, I think chess.com developers can replace the chat with a quasi-chat. In a quasi-chat the players can not type their own messages, but can select a pre-written (pre-approved) messages by selecting them from the list. The list should not contain any messages related to teaming, of course. And, based on the games I played, I created almost comprehensive list of phrases for the chat. I based it on frequently used messages (sorted by frequency): 1. Hi. 2. Red/blue/yellow/green you are [language - MOD]! 3. Red/blue/yellow/green you are my little [language - MOD]! 4. Shut up red/blue/yellow/green! 5. LOL 6. [language - MOD] you all! 7. gg This way we will keep the chat in place for those who can not live without it. And at the same time the chat won't be useful for teaming.

It was brought to my attention from a different form, that I and some of the guys were talking about making the game a bit more dynamic possibly. More aggressive so to speak. So we came up with the idea what about up to move 25 or 30 if the king is captured or checkmated it is worth 30 or double the points? Because at the moment the double fianchetto, castle and queen promotion late middle game is dominating the boards at the top levels. Could we possibly try it for a weekend or so and see how it does? What do you guys think about this? We thought the openings would vary a little more possible and make the game more aggressive and dynamic.