The best thing 4 player chess has done is made me much more defensive minded. Now finding I am much more aware of opponent plans and ensuring that I cover for them.
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BabYagun Oct 2, 2017
In the position below I moved my rook to the D rank, as a result the yellow king was checkmated and the red one checked. So, it was a double check + checkmate at the same time. I believe the server added +20 to the score at that moment. Should it be +25 or +20? P.S. For the testing purpose it would be good to see the current score (not the final one) in the game replay mode. Of course it is not very important, but could help to find more bugs.
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BabYagun Oct 2, 2017
TL;DR: When two players resign immediately after each other, leaving one player left, the remaining player doesn't seem to get the +20 point bonus for being the last player standing I neglected to take a screenshot of this, but here's what happened: I was playing Green. Blue (across from me) resigned early with 0 points. Gold (to my right) grabbed Blue's king and ended up with a pretty big lead. I ended up in a vicious battle against Gold, while Red played defensively. Eventually, both Gold and I were pretty depleted in material. Gold was still well ahead of both myself and Red on points, but basically had only king and pawns left, and so resigned, with 53 points total. At this point I had 32 points, while Red had 24. However, I had only a couple minor pieces left, to Red's more or less full army, not to mention that Red was one move away from capturing Gold's king. Given that I would surely lose to Red 1-on-1, and had little hope of capturing >20 points of material to pass Gold's score, I decided to resign immediately after Gold's resignation. To my great surprise, I ended up in second place in the game, with the final scores at Gold: 53, Green (me): 32, Red: 24, Blue: 0. I was very surprised that Red didn't get +20 for being the last player standing. I'm guessing this was because both Gold and I had colored kings on the board? In any case, this was pretty unfair to Red, since s/he should have finished in 2nd place with 44 points for being the last player standing.
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knivetsil Oct 1, 2017
I guess on the first game of the day, so maybe the header forced the image to be refreshed? Anyway, someone promoted to a yellow Q, and then I see the highlighted squares so I am in fact able to determine where the move was done. But the square where the promoted Q sits is empty, so it appears as a ghostly spirit or maybe like in Star Trek when you see the teleportation chamber and the yellow Q(1) appears inside! It could be pretty confusing I think I was able to make a move and then the Q appeared afterwards. I wondered if maybe the image was not pre-loaded like the other ones? Also, this is a dumb question, but I have never seen anyone in 4-way chess promote to a knight or bishop or rook. Is it possible? I probably have it set to auto-queen in my settings. Thank you!!
Anyone scored over 100 yet? Screenshot for proof!
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guineapig25 Sep 30, 2017
I love many aspects of this game that don't exist at all in regular chess: - You cannot leave pieces exposed. If your queen is attacked or someone checks you, you will be attacked by others who take advantage of the fact that you must get out of check or protect your queen. - You can checkmate someone while your piece is protected by another player's piece. For example, I can check your king with my queen if my queen is defended from your king by someone else's piece (I'd be sacrificing my piece to get the mate) - If two or three players are attacking a square, a third player may potentially move his/her piece into that square safely because if one of the other two players were to attack the piece, his/her own piece would be in danger due to the other players attacking the square. What other situations or strategies have you observed which are unique to this game?
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Dragadiddle Sep 28, 2017
Guys, when you remove some feature (like Team Mode in 4 Player Chess), please, think twice how to do that right. For example, instead of just removing the Team Mode button you could leave both Singles and Team Mode buttons, but when someone clicks on Team he should see a message: "This mode is turned off temporary. Please try it again by October 1st." This way you will show some respect to the players. And also you won't get lots of questions like: "Where is the team mode now?!" This is a win-win approach. Please use it for all the changes. For example, the CHANGELOG could be places near (below?) the rules, so the old players know something is changed and can read the log without visiting this forum. The tiny messages like "player_name_here resigned" should not disappear after 0.1 sec, they should live longer or should be added to the chat window and stay there till we close the browser. I understand that this is a prototype. But lots of improvements can be done really easy. Thanks.
  (EDIT: IT HAS BEEN REMOVED TEMPORARILY) Hi guys, we are testing 2 versus 2! It is highly experimental and there is no guarantee everything is perfect, regardless here it is.  Here are the rules that can be found in-game if you scroll all the way down: Teams Pieces move and capture like always (though there is no en passant at this time) Pawns promote on your 8th rank Your team-mate is the player across from you. You cannot capture your teammate's pieces or check/checkmate them. The first team to checkmate an enemy player wins! Points are purely for bragging rights!   Also please note you can privately talk with your teammate by using /team before entering your message.   Ratings are also calculated for team games.
Just played a game with CollisionofMinds and Oily_GOD. The 4th player timed out at the very beginning of the game and we decided to leave his king untouched. So, instead of fighting for those +20, we played an interesting and fair game. Special thanks to CollisionofMinds who offered this.
How many queens did you see simultaneously on the board in 4 Player Chess? 7 and 8 queens is quite usual. Once I've seen 9 queens (4 + 2 + 2 + 1). Did you see more? Please post your screenshots.
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GMfrankzhou Sep 26, 2017
Around 18:13 in my video my time is around from 22 seconds left but after i move my Q. it went down to 02 sec. and around 12:05 my opponent time down to 02 sec went back to 58 secs. or did i missed something here? https://youtu.be/kCdxi_ODUiA
Very frequently I get up to 20 games in a row aborted. I think people abort based on the other players rating. Either the rating is too high or too low for their liking. There has also been complains about the weaker players teaming up on the higher rated players to catch their rating points, but I don't know about that. Either way, I think the game should be anonymous until the end of the game. Then people can'tjudge whether or not the other players ratings are to their likings. Getting 20 games in a row aborted is just such a pain. Or someone who abort three games in a row should just automatically be banned from chess.com
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chesssky2 Sep 26, 2017
So, I'm doing these because I think that some of us (not me) will improve by looking at other games and figuring out what works. That's, like, the basis of the development of regular chess. What I mean is that, the more of these that come out, the more established a four-player chess game will become. This one is incomplete because I was going back-and-forth on the in-browser interface, took a break, and my Windows did the I'll-restart-right-now-to-show-you-who's-boss. But, the opening is worth looking at. Spoiler: I lose. Red starts off with 1) g4, d6, d11, k11; 2) Nf3, d5, d10, j11; 3) g5, e6, d9, i11; 4) g6, d11, d8, h11; 5) g7, Bb5, Ni12, g11=Q'; As you can see, move five is about the earliest you can receive a queen. With the Michael Bay opening, you can run a strong drive up the rook file. It's best to do this when the Queen side faces the preceding movant. If the Kingside faces the preceeding movant, then you expose yourself to a little bit of easier mating from those who can cause you the most pain. 6) g8=Q', Nc9, k12, Q'l6; 7) Q'd8, c4, h12, Nl4; 8) Q'h4, d7, Bh13, Q'k5; 9) Q'd4, Qa6, j11, Nl9; Red's queen prime is looking to trade for Blue's queen. 9) j3, Nc6, j10, Q'k10; Blue's knight is now attacking Red's promoted queen after sidestepping her attack. 10) Qh4, e7, j9, Q'xj9; 9) Bj2, f7, Rj14, Q'xj14; based on the point value difference, a trade of a rook for a promoted queen makes some sense. But it also can result in tactical disadvantages against the other two players. 11) Bh3, Qa7, Nxj14, Rn10; I moved my rook over to prepare to push my m10-pawn up to the top. Red's got a solid game because Red is going to pivot with the rook, two bishops and two queens to attack which ever adjacent opponent is weakest. 12) Qg3, Qb6, Ni12, l8; 13) Rg1, Qa7, Ng11, k10; 14) Q'g4, Nd7, i12, Bm8; The bishop is an attempt to protect the Green's night, which is vulnerable. 15) Bxm8!, d4, i11, Qxk10; 16) Q'h3, e5, i10, l7; 17) Ni3, f6, i9, j10; Green would have been better off with a Bm7 followed by a 0-0, because then the Knight would not have been the giant liability that it is to become. 18) Q'g2, Qb6 So, that's the end of it. But, if you look at chess history, most of the early games play like we do when we're first learning how chess works. It's not until a record of chess games became long and accessible that the moves reached a greater and greater depth. If we do the same early with four-player, then we have a chance of a making this sustainable.
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runsurfswim Sep 26, 2017
This has probably already been mentioned by somebody already but sometimes a few squares on the board turn black or a part of a square turns black. Doesn't really do anything to the game, just a little annoying. Also I have a question: How does the rating work?
Deccodude and MDAWG_2019 will not attack one another, they play together until the other two players are defeated. They also play long after the other two players are gone, double-checking kings to run up their scores.
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turdmeister Sep 17, 2017
First, here's the PGN I use: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Here's the game, with notes: Red Blue Yellow Green Comments h4 d7 h11 k8 1 Going up the center has the disadvantage that every pawn will level up on the same square. g4 e7 h10 j8 2 Ng2 f7 h9 l10 3 Nh2 g7 h8 Bl11 4 either blue or yellow could capture on the next round, but each would lose to the other's queen's recapture. d4 h7=Q' Nd12 Nl6 5 d5 h7Q'b7?? Bxb7 Bxj13! 6 This was a good move by green. It's a lot easier to trap the rook in its corner now that you can do so with an adjacent player once his bishop has abandoned its post. j3 Qxb7 h7=Q' Bxk14 7 The bishop begins a remorseless campaign of bloodshed. d6 c5 Q'j9 Bxa4 See how blue moved to riskessly take red's pawn, but unwittingly opened up to lose his rook to yellow? d7 c8 Qhh11? Qm8 8 Green put yellow in check d8=Q' Bc7 Nh13 Bxh11 9 Red has now exposed Yellow's queen to Green's bishop. Yellow is in check, and cannot easily solve both threats. Q'd10 Qxg2? Q'xh11 l7! 10 I wanted to be like Green, but, if memory serves, it will unravel unspectacularly. Blue sacrificed a point-valuable queen to gain an knight. And Green is the one to watch again. Lastly, the missing knight now means that the pawn on h4 is unprotected. I should have taken like I planned on b10, because that would have also protected the same pawn. Bxg2 Bb7 i12 j8 11 f3 c11 Nf11 i8 12 Q'xb10 Bd8 Nh10 h8 13 Bl8 Q'xd8 Bxf14 14 I have missed and will miss a frame or two. See the screenshots below. Q'xc8 g8=Q' 15 Nxg8 00! 16 Q'a7 Nf10 Nl9 Q'd10 f12 Nj5 Green is attacking Red's weak pawn on i3, while Red is targeting the pawn on d13. i3 Ne12! Nxi3+ Ki2 Nxd10 Nxg2 Qxd2 f11 Rn8 Qj5 kf13 Qi8+! Red queen is hoping for an easy mate. Ni4 ke14 Ql5! Qj6 d12 Ri8 Queen should have gone to d11. Red doesn't see the pin on his pawn until it's too late. h5? e11 Rxi4+ kh2 f10 Ri8 e4 f9 Rm8 Qi6 Qf11 Rn9 f8 Qk5 Bi3 f7=Q' Qk8 Qxj12 Q'f4+ k11 kh3 Q'xf3+ Qk6+ ki2 Q'f2+ Qk10 Here, Green sees an opportunity to snatch the points of a queen while Red is playing check-to-the-lou in his home court Bh2 Qf11f3 Qxi12+ Kj2 Q'xh2+ Qxg12+ Now Green checks the yellow King, but Red won't see any advantage. Kk3 Rf13 Qh13? Rdf1? Rxh13 l4+ This opens up Green so he can't get a back-rank mate. Kk4 Rk8+ Yellow dropped out for some reason here. Ki3 Rj14+ Green is going after the points for a yellow king e5 Rxe14 e6 Rxe11 A novel feature to four-player chess is the detritus from eliminated players Re1 Rn8 Missed a moment or two here Rxe7 Rxe7 g6 i11 g7 Re3 g8=Q' Rxf3+ Ki2 Nm7 Q'n8+ Km4 Q'xm7 h11 Q'i11 Rf11 Qi8+! l5 Qxf11 I think the time ran out.
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runsurfswim Sep 12, 2017