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The problems with the new set-up are that: - there are MUCH LESS variance in possible moves and openings, and you're OBLIGED to play some moves, with the old set-up it was much richer, - if you are G and RY play correctly, it is IMPOSSIBLE to survive if B is incompetent/passive/idiot, and it was not the case THAT much in the old set-up (of course it's a common problem for ALL set-ups, intrinsically, because of the configuration of the board, but I maintain that with the new set-up it is clearly much worse because in the old set-up it took more time for RY to do that and consequently G had a bigger life expectancy and B had more opportunities to wake up, etc.). It is ironic that the old set-up was removed because it was presumably "unbalanced" for G, but in fact now it's much worse for G, - it is clearly ABNORMAL that some moves are forbidden because of the possible check on the 1st (!) move from your left. In addition, it is perfectly clear now, 6 months after the known catastrophic change, that it was a wrong decision, and it is clear that many strong players don't come anymore because of that or are far from being as active as they used to be. It is very significant that this year World Championship had to be played with the old set-up, otherwise too many strong players were boycotting it. Therefore I believe that the Admin team must have the courage to recognise that it had been a mistake and return to the old set-up as default. (But BRSTI and BYG, etc. should remain available for those who want to launch games using them). NB: amigos, PLEASE do not pollute this thread with considerations about the rating calculation and about the default timing and about the arborescence and organisation of the game lobby, Ok? Thank you.

Deleteeeee

hey admins can you like make the server usable again because whatever game i am playing the server is restarting and a lt of loss is happening so yeah Thanks, Virus

A huge percentage of my games have the server time out where it looks like various players run out of time. Then even if I wait several minutes for the game to come back online, it will again not respond and I will lose the game for timing out. What is going on?? This has been happening long enough and we deserve an explanation at least. It'd be nice to get those points back too.

The gathering of feedback can be very useful, but there are two problems with our current system. It is difficult to find the way to give feedback, and it is time consuming to do it. I would presume that many players look around for a system to say ideas and complaints, and not finding any obvious one, just don't say anything. Or, even if they find the forum, they maybe to unsure about it's purpose, or too shy to say anything, or just don't care enough too write out a forum post. I don't think they know of the discord, and the third option, contacting admins, is not really a system.Our current system is not well designed to gather ideas from anyone who is not from the minority of people who have the time and energy to track down everything. The result of this is that almost all our feedback comes from strong players, who are comfortable and familiar with the workings of the system. We need representation from all the community. The solution, in my mind, is simple. Simply put a button that pops up to a comment and submit box in the /variants. This could be, perhaps, in the upper left hand corner, and it needs to be a bit bigger than the forum button. There are two drawbacks. First, this needs to be coded, and while I don't know how difficult it would be, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. The specific placing I mentioned could be adjusted. Secondly, this would require a bit more work on admins part to process the comments. I believe that a. The rewards would be worth it and more importantly b. This system doesn't necessarily need to be perfectly maintained Quite simply, if we want to maximize our understanding of all our players wants and needs, we need a simpler, more intuitive system. The idea outlined above, in my mind, is the best way to do it Thanks

i just had a crazy game got a checkmate with my king! got second by 2 points . https://www.chess.com/variants/4-player-chess/game/30950411

Dear 4PC Community! There is a lot of discussion going on about the setup, the rating system and much other stuff.I participated in most of these discussions but I want to sum it all up in one post here. 1. Who am I? For those of you who still don't know me: My name is Michael T. Tieber and I am from Austria.I started playing 4-Player-Chess when it was quite new and I rose to the top 20 right away and I've been there ever since. When I started there was only FFA and I never really became fond of Teams and stuck with FFA and Solo. I am one of 3 players who played all 3 Solo world championships. So I guess it is fair to say that I know a lot about this game and I understand it on a very high level. 2. How does 4-player-chess work? Let me explain to you how 4-player-chess is played. I am going to break it down in reverse order we begin with how a game ends and work us backwards through the stages to the beginning of the game. This might seem a bit odd, but every stage makes more sense if you know what the goal of the stage is, so it makes sense to analyze later stages first:How the game ends:The game ends if only one player remains. But this player is not necessarily the winner because the player with the most points wins not the last remaining one.2-player-stage:If one player has a lead of more than 20 points it instantly ends due to "claim win". If the difference is smaller, it is often still not played out because one player has a significant material lead and the other player resigns. 3-player stage:The goal of this stage is of course to create a winning 2-player stage. So either you go into the next stage with 20 points lead, or with a material lead that wins. In order to do so, you have to stop other players from achieving such a lead. So there is a constant change of alliances because if one player gets too strong you team up with the other player and attack him. So in the 3-player-stage, it should be easy for you to attack other players and hard for other players to attack you. Therefore you need a save king position and good piece mobility.4-player-stage:The most important thing here is of course to make it to the next stage. You can go into the 3-player-stage with less material because it will be balanced out anyways. In order to do so, you have to make sure another player is going to be checkmated and not you. This is the primary goal, but there is also a secondary goal: You want active pieces and a save king in the next stage. Geometrically your opposite is farther away than your flank players. So if one of your flank players is checkmated first you have a side where you can put your King and both players are far away from him and will have more difficulties attacking. Or you can push your pawns on that side and there is no player to stop them. While if your opposite is checkmated first, no matter in which direction you move your pieces, there will always be an enemy, and your pieces are not mobile. TeamingConsidering this it is in both your and your opposites interest to checkmate a flank player and not your opposite. Therefore even in Solo early teaming is just a natural development because it is the best strategy to play for the win. And you can sacrifice a lot for that because the positional advantage in the 3-player-stage is more valuable than material. 3. Rating System For the rating system, we can make a lot of different approaches. I want to focus on 4 of them and tell you what I think which rating system suits them best.FunDifferent players enjoy different things about the game, but I think especially for new players it is important to have small successes right away so every new reached stage in the game should feel meaningful so there should be a different rating calculation for each placement.I suggest the classical FFA rating +3 +1 -1 -3Sadly this rating system runs into problems in higher elo because it can be a strategy to just play for 2nd. This would entirely change how the game is played because you can team with your opposite through the whole game. Take out one flank player, then the other one, and then either play it out, resign, or even share the win. Does not matter much because you always win elo, and those games can be really fast, so you don't have to play the long and difficult 3-player stage. This is actually how Teams was invented, and why the Solo rating System came, to prevent this.WinIn the end, everybody wants to win the game, so there is one winner and three Losers.The rating for this cause is of course the Solo rating +3 -1 -1 -1This rating can be very frustrating if you almost win a game but not quite. Or if one player is not able to win the game anymore but does decide who wins. Then it's a coinflip for the other two players who wins and who loses and they often have hardly any influence on this.This is emotionally draining even for strong players and really not what you want for a new player who is just learning the game.RepresentativeIt is a very valid point to state that the rating system should represent the way the game is played. If we look at what we described earlier there is one big winner who wins the game, one big loser, who did not make it to the 3-player-stage and two smaller losers who were not successful in the 3-player-stage.The rating system that is most representative in my opinion is the Radon rating +4 -1 -1 -2StrategyBoth Solo and Radon rating run into the problem in the 3-player-stage that you sometimes end up in a position where you can't win anymore and you are just kingmaker. This is frustrating for all players and has an element of randomness. So to take out this Randomness it makes sense to make a difference between 2nd and 3rd place. But as we discussed in the classic FFA rating if 2nd place wins elo, there could be played for this. So the rating I suggest is the Empty rating +4 0 -1 -3 I think all of these rating ideas make sense in some way. Classical FFA rating is not really suitable for high elo if you don't want to change the way the game is played but the others are all fine. All of these rating Ideas can be tweaked a little bit and all of them need to be scaled with the right elo factor.Rating systems that I don't consider suitable for FFA are systems where the 2nd place wins more than 3rd and 4th but those places are equal such as +2 0 -1 -1 or +5 -1 -2 -2 Maybe there is an argumentation for these rating systems but I see none.And totally inappropriate are systems where 1st and 2nd win equally or systems where 1st place does not win most but I don't think that anybody would suggest this. 4. Setup The difference between the setups are King and Queen positions. As for 4 players the King can each stand on their left or their right, we have 16 permutations of the setup.Half of them have some kind of symmetry and Half of them has not.According to engines, the most balanced setup is with reds King on his left and all other Kings on the right. But I think symmetrical setups are more enjoyable. Maybe I am wrong about that, but I think the more Symmetrical the setup is the easier it is to adapt to different colors from game to game. So let's focus on the Symmetrical setups. But first let us talk about what matters about the setups. KingsideYou want your King to be save from attacks. If you get a check from the left side other players know that you have to react to that, and can attack you easily. So it is beneficial to have your King on the right. DiagonalsIf queens are on the same diagonals as Kings you can create an attack by just moving a pawn without developing the queen. If Queens are on the same diagonals the opening of a Queen diagonal might stop other players from doing the same if they don't want to risk a Queen trade. Sadly I am absolutely no Teams- and therefore no openings expert, so I can't go more into detail about what the strategic differences are in the opening. I just can tell you that later in the game the setup matters less and less, because in 3-player-stage totally different things matter, and there has been loads of movement on the board so it does not matter much anymore where the King was in the beginning. Old Standard SetupRed and Yellow kings on the right. Blue and Green kings on the left.According to engines and also a lot of very strong players it is the most unbalanced setup. Green and blue have a huge disadvantage because they move later, their kings are on the left, and if red and yellow open with their king pawn, which is the most common opening, this opening is basically denied for green and blue. So they have to play more passive openings.The Old Standard invert is already slightly better because the later moving "team" BG has their Kings on the right, but the denied king pawn is still a big disadvantage. Omatamix SetupAll kings on the rightIs by far the fairest setup and easiest to play as you can play mostly the same opening as all players have the same setup. Still, engines favor other setups maybe because Kings and Queens are on the same diagonals which allows fast attacks and therefore gives benefit to earlier moving players.The Omatamix invert is basically the same setup, but why you would want all kings to the left if having them to the right is better? Bsrti-invert SetupRed and Blue king on the left. Yellow and Green king on the right.According to engines, it is the most balanced Setup that has some symmetry. I can't talk much about Bsrti, because I have not tried it yet. The Idea is that both teams have one king on the right and one on the left, so they are balanced. Later moving players have their King on their right which should decrease their disadvantage a little bit. The fact that each King has one Diagonal to a King and one to a Queen makes fewer early attacks possible than in the Omatamix setup. So maybe this is really the most balanced SetupI covered Bsrti-invert instead of Bsrti, because according to engines it is more balanced because later moving players have the king to their right. The 4th symmetrical Setup is similar to Bsrti and again I think the best version of these kinds of setups is the Bsrti-invert. Personal OpinionI like Omatamix best due to the consistency you can have in your openings. Some people state that Omatamix is boring and you always play the same opening. Well first, I play a different one, the Pegasus opening, and I am very successful with that, so there is obviously not that only line some players state there is. And 2nd, even if it were so, a good FFA game normally is more than 100 moves long. And only the first let's say 10 moves are the opening. So to say that Omatamix games are always the same and boring is an enormous exaggeration. I really hope we won't go back to old Standard because it is the most unbalanced one and playing blue or green is just less fun. I know a lot of people wish it back because they are used to it. But sometimes you have to adapt. And we should really not go back to a worse setup only because we are too lazy to change. Standard SetupWe are discussing a lot what the best setup is, but the question is, why do we need to decide? Can't we just let the user decides what he likes best? The answer is, that we can let users decide, but there still has to be a Standard. Because if I just want to play a game I want to press the play button and play. So there has to be one setup preselected. And this will be played the most just because it is easy to select. That does not mean that all the other setups should not exist. And this is also true for rating systems and time controls. All the other systems can exist and can be selectable, but there has to be a Standard. I would really like to have loads of setups to choose from. They can be played on the same elo. They should be shown in the same Lobby, of course with selection options like "only show Omatamix games". But every queue that is not Standard will take longer to fill up because Standard will be the most played one and therefore the one players are used to. So this is why we are discussing so heavily the topic of what should be the Standard Setup. Because even if all the other setups are available it still influences us what setup will be chosen as Standard. Also because the world championship will be played on the Standard Setup. SummaryFor me, all of this is a very important Topic because 4-player-chess is my biggest passion and the world championship is the highlight of the year for me. I state that world championship games are better than sex. I did not cover time controls but I heavily prefer increment and I really enjoy the 1|7 time format. I think the best Setup is Omatamix but I think I would also be fine with Bsrti-invert.As rating system, of course I think the one I suggested, the Empty rating +4 0 -1 -3 is the best. But I can also live with Solo rating +3 -1 -1 -1, Radon rating +4 -1 -1 -2 and even high Standard +3 0 0 -3 is fine for me. A huge Thanks to all of you who took the time to read my entire post.I hope I was able to explain my opinions to you, and I hope you have the feeling what I'm saying makes sense. CheersMichael

So since they changed the variants homepage, I couldn't see War for throne in the category lists, had to search the title in searchbar - was fine. Today search bar no longer brings up War for Throne, so to start lobby I had to go into archive and click 'play' on an old game. I search Chaturaji and see nothing also, what have they done with my variants?

I just want to go on a quick rant about how people just can't keep their mouths shut in chat. In like every 3-5 games I get a dam A-hole who just has to spam the chat with dumb emojis after I make a bad move. Like people you are playing chess, a gentleman's game. BE RESPECTFUL. And if you are offered a rematch by anyone, accept it unless you actually got to do something else. idk if anyone really cares but I really hate those people.

https://www.chess.com/variants/4-player-chess/game/30524228/230/2

https://www.chess.com/variants/4-player-chess/game/30764763 I didn't even see the mate on red lol

It is quite obvious (I believe) that the quality of the game increase, imagination, creativity, but also frequency and availability of the games depend on the NUMBER of the players involved. It is equally obvious I think that the number of the players naturally is diminishing (deaths, disgust for the game, lack of time...) and we therefore continuously need new players. Finally, new players (who arrive often) need to STAY with us. And that's where we have a problem. It's been probably at least 3 years I've been advocating here for a drastic LIMITATION of the access of the new players. I strongly, very strongly believe that players with less than maybe 50 or 100 games shouldn't have access (joining) to games other than Standard Rapid FFA or Teams. Currently a lot of curious players come, join just any game and find themselves for instance in something dramatically different from standard (War for Throne for example, or King safety) or in antichess or in hyper... I think they SHOULDN'T have access to blitz/bullet/hyper neither. Come on, they're discovering the game! They have FIRST begin by something basic, with no critical time constraint. https://www.chess.com/variants/4-player-chess/game/30133914 Why do I strongly believe such a limitation should be implemented ASAP? a) many of them come, are killed within seconds and then never come back (disgusted), and even are able to communicate saying that 4p chess is nonsense or BS. It's clearly very bad from marketing point of view and doesn't contribute to promote our beautiful hobby, b) it's not good neither (from marketing point of view) that newcomers judge about 4p chess GENERALLY after maybe just 1-2 games in some weird variant, c) if we want people to stay, they should first understand the main game, and rather calmly, without time pressure, hence Rapid and Standard FFA or Teams, d) it is clearly very unfair for their opps, for whom it becomes much more complicated to win.

As Season 1 of the 4 Player Chess League is coming to an end, and as the Playoffs are set to begin, we'd like to get everyone's input on how you'd like to see the round of 16 games structured. The Playoff games are going to maintain the FFA Points system. The Round of 16 will feature the Top 4 finishers in the League, in 4 separate games. To win your bracket you must reach 7 points to put the Lobby in Check, and then win a game to secure the Victory in your Group. The 4 winners will advance to the Finals. The 4PCL Team has 2 ideas on how the Playoff Games will be structured and we need your input, to cast your vote please visit: https://4playerchessleague.com/ffa-playoffs-format/

Whatever changes were made here, I now can't see challenges from others even though they are switched on in my settings (see screenshots attached). That's pretty frustrating. Pls help me here.

I just think it would be interesting to be able to see past leaderboards. Like the Teams Rapid Leaderboard for June 13th, 2019 for example. In addition, it adds more 'permanency' and probably interest. The flaw in the idea is implementation+perhaps encourages people to sit on their rating

Prior to the merge, FFA was FAR more popular than Solo. 6 months later, the player base has shrunk, and many are frustrated with the Solo system. We've even gone out of our way to create a League so we can keep playing FFA + Old Standard, but this is not the answer. The question is simple, why can't we have a choice between Solo and FFA? I don't understand the reasoning behind getting rid of the more popular points system, while Solo could've been kept separate with its own rating as it was before.

Yes. You can. According to article https://support.chess.com/article/596-can-i-have-multiple-accounts, multiple accounts are supported. But adding some constraints would be good as per my view. second account can play only -200 < x < +200 rating until they play 'n' number of games. Also it would be good to publish authorized second accounts at some place. Everyday I see some 1500 guys playing like a pro and it would be really hard to gain rating with them. It's really annoying when second accounts come to play and steal a lot of ratings.

It's now more than 6 months (!) since the famous catastrophic merge. Among many unpleasant consequences, the server instability is the most upsetting. Have just finished again 4th because of the disconnection in a game that I was clearly winning. Hence a huge point loss again. I've never asked for any points refunds as it's petty and not needed. But well, WHEN will you fix this problem once for all?! Is it a big deal to buy, install and configure properly a new server?! It's been now long time, and you had ENOUGH TIME to have it fixed. Definitely.

2000+ Teams games take a long time to fill, when will the server be stable enough for us to finish games? https://www.chess.com/variants/4-player-chess/game/30423488/86/4 Since the server isn't stable, and it crashes, can we at least get rating refunds when the server crashes in Teams games we are winning? We're up -10 in this game when the server crashed, but each lost -15 rating as a result. I've easily lost 200 - 300+ Teams rating points due to server crashes. This is getting old now.