Recently I have been noticing a lack of understanding of how the 3 player stage should be played out, assuming you are playing to win, so I have decided to break it down for you guys. Comprehending how to read the board and the players will increase your chances of winning dramatically. For this you need to grasp the do’s and don’ts while playing against the two remaining opponents. Here are the key factors to consider :

-Unnecessary chivalry
-Points
-Which player to attack?
-Checkmates

In the end I will also give a bonus tip that might help you get the upper hand in your games. So without further ado let us get started in our analysis.

Disclaimer : I blurred out the names of the players used in the pictures to avoid advertising and/or offending individuals. No offense is ever meant by any means. All of the following pictures have been used for analysis purposes only.

1.    Unnecessary chivalry

After eliminating a player there is sometimes an interesting yet annoying event that occurs. The players who have eliminated a side player by teaming up suddenly turn their arrows to the other side player and decide to do the same to him. You already sense how unfair that is toward that player. In this scenario both players think that the other player will split points and share first place. But the fact is you don’t know what your opposite will do. He might share, he might troll you and take the win only for himself and you will look like a total fool left with nothing but frustrations. As a good player you don’t want to leave your chances to another player’s hand, so I encourage you to thoroughly consider that thought when you are playing next time.

Playing for second place is not why you should play. Embrace the winner’s mentality and always play for first no matter what. There is always a possibility that you might win, even though if you are left with only a single pawn or even no pawn. You could try to stalemate yourself and win by default. But this all begins by not trusting your opposite to full extend. After all he also plays to win and he will use every opportunity presented in order to get that juicy first place. Your job is to prevent that from happening, not religiously support him in his cause as some do unknowingly by for instance not attacking due to a presumed idea of trust. When they lose, then, they start shouting TRAITOR TRAITOR, but the fact is there is no treason in FFA because every player plays for his own account, as should you (read : https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/theres-no-such-thing-as-treason). No one promised you in the beginning of the game that you will get full support of the opposite player. You cannot expect him to present you the win on a golden plate so get smart and start playing for first place.

2.    Points

This part of the game is tricky. For you to win the game you need to have the highest points of all players, obviously. Using advantage of checks, exchanging pieces (although not recommended), double checks and teaming up are all good moves for you to gain points. But why is this so important? Well, in the first place collecting plenty of points protects you from ending up last and incidently losing ELO points. Secondly, if you manage to steal enough points to the point where you no longer need to be participating in the game, it will automatically make you the champion of that game. There are two extremes in this spectrum that could happen. Let’s analyse both.

When you are up to '50-70'+ points and you have pieces left with values ranging from one to nine you might consider resigning. This sounds counter intuitive when you read it for the first time. When you think about it though your pieces have value and with this also goes a danger that they might be captured. Resigning, however, overrules this option as your pieces turn grey so other players cannot benefit anymore from you, except for your king. To clarify this I will explain it with an example :

Yellow has 70 points and is already checkmated. Red and blue have 29 and 31 points respectively. The maximum points red can get is 38 (1 king=20 points, 2 rooks=10 points, 1 bishop=5 points and 3 pawns=3points). Add his current points to that and it gets a total of 67 points, meaning he cannot win the game. Same rule applies for blue. He can get a total of 23 points from red (1king and 3 pawns) adding up to 54 points, also meaning he cannot win. So yellow has won the game without even actively participating in the endgame due to his earlier point collection. Hence it is important to loot as many points as possible.

In the worst scenario you end up with 1-2 points after a player is eliminated. Then you have to find a way to up your points to rule out the possibility of getting forth. You can do this by crazily exchanging pieces, yes. But this again is a loser mentality and is not always the rational decision. Amateurs (or noobs as popularly referred to) panic under this stress and start suiciding on whichever piece they can lay hands on. More calm and collected players (the professionals of this game) tend to remain cool and play for first place using advantage of checks and threats until a balance is maintained in the scale of points.

3.    Which player to attack?

The most crucial part of the game that you must understand fully to win the game is to know who to attack and when to attack. Having this insight immediately determines whether you are going to win or make a fool of yourself. It is honestly the one thing that will decide your success or failure.

So after the first player is checkmated the main line is that there is one player who is strong in material, one player who has the most points and the opposite of the checkmated player who has few points but perhaps sufficient material. Guys, the golden rule here is to keep the balance straight between all players, but of course a bit more in your advantage so you can win the game😉. This means that when there is a player who is enjoying all his pieces and is even on his way to make few more queens, you should immediately attack that player along with the other player.

Let me tell you why this is important. Say there is this player with 3 extra queens plus his own pieces all alive and you decide to attack the weaker player, which is convenient right? Because you actually can attack him. Well no, this is the worst thing you could possibly do. The reason why is because once you finish the weaker player off, and as you do you will lose pieces yourself too, the stronger player will be able to kill you off easily since you have already wasted your pieces on the weaker player. Therefore it is not advised to eliminate a weaker player right away. You have to maximize your utility from every piece and every player, including other player’s pieces. Think like this : as long as the weaker player is alive he can use those pieces to attack the stronger player. He might capture or exchange pieces with the stronger player which will make it partially easier for you in the 1vs1 stage. Killing off the weaker player cancels this possibility and you end up fighting with perhaps one rook left against 3 hungry queens. Here is an example of such a game.

As you can see green repeatedly harasses yellow while totally neglecting blue ending up in a position where he has to make tremendous sacrifices in order to stop being checkmated with the aid of yellow bishop. As green attacked the weaker player (yellow), blue took every advantage to increase his chances of winning. This could have been avoided if green had addressed the problem earlier by stopping blue from queening and thus keeping the balance in the game. Instead he ruined it for both himself and yellow resulting in an easy win for blue.

We could clearly see that green didn’t know WHO to attack and also WHEN to attack. So our takeaway here is to properly read the board and advance in such a pattern that is beneficial for you, meaning don’t be a d*ck and have some common sense. Keep an eye on the balance.

4.    Checkmates

Just as you need to know who and when to attack you also need to know whether it’s worth to checkmate a player or keep him alive. The benefits of checkmating a player earns you 20 points. The benefits of keeping a player alive, is a lot more. First of all a player who is not checkmated has valuable pieces that could raise your points in the game and, as discussed earlier, might make a difference between first place or second. Furthermore the very same pieces will be used in attacking the third player, weakening his game and therefore making your hand stronger. So before mating a player, try to maximize your utility from all his pieces (capitalism be like).

Also the one thing that you must never do is attack a weak player while you are down in points and the third player has the follow up move. To properly comprehend my statement, let us look at this perfect exhibit :

Yellow decides to attack, for some reason, the already weakened player blue. Now if you carefully look at the points you can see that yellow has one point, green has 33 points (and blue has 5 points but is irrelevant). What makes this even worse is that after yellow green is to move, meaning he can steal the mate as it indeed happened. What yellow did was absolutely wrong in many ways. You have to understand that when a player is leading in points, you cannot allow him to gain any more points and you should definitely not assist him with a mate. You have to stop him by seriously weakening him. This is the only way from preventing him to guarantee his first place. How do you do that? By, first of all, leaving the weak player alone. By harassing him with threats on his king and pieces. By, if you find it necessary, protecting the weak player temporarily. Meanwhile the weak player will have time to reposition and maybe even queen creating thus a BALANCE in the game. To give you an idea, this is how approximately a well balanced game looks like : 

Bonus

As I promised in the beginning of this article I will give away an element that I quite often use in my games to increase my chances of winning. Now this isn’t something that will magically make you win all your games but it would certainly not hurt to know. The aspect I’m talking about is the psychological, or better, the emotional state of the players that I use into my advantage. Some players let themselves drag by their emotions making impulsive moves. This could happen for any reason. He might find you annoying in person or he might be frustrated because you caused him too much damage in the earlier stages or because you are playing for second (which is quite understandable to be attacked for). But in any case, being aware of this can help you win more easily. Be alert of their rage and frustrations and use that into your advantage and you will see how quickly you rise on the leaderboard.

That’s all I have to say about this topic. Feel free to share your thoughts and insights so we can help everyone become the better version of himself regarding chess. Salut to all and have fun!

nice man, good for new people, and snowflakes/turtles

great post

"There is always a possibility that you might win, even though if you are left with only a single pawn or even no pawn."

True! Here's an extreme example : )

https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess?g=4194443-223

great

Great work, pretty much all of this is also very useful in Solo by the way. 

There's more to be said about trades in my opinion. Trading pieces is quite an efficient way to gain points, so I don't mind it too much in general as long as the balance is maintained. 

I've got one too : https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess?g=4458102-178

Even though it's not as satisfying as yours!

I agree but I am also fond of getting the best out of every piece, meaning using opponents' pieces against each other etc

Very nice article. Here a review that shows part of what you are saying:

https://youtu.be/ErlDhDY5esE

wow thanks, this is surprising! The link doesn't work though, is that possible?

Yes, sorry just uploading this minute

Now it work...

yeah, thanks!

Great article, the real ones already know. Agree with hest about it relating to Solo

One comment I will also add is this:

when the 4th player has resigned or timed out instead of being checkmated, and there is not any imminent mate in 1-2 that only you can get, you should just let the zombie king roam around and focus your moves on the 2 opponents who are still playing. Get the +20 at the end after you win the game. The presence of zombie king also means that one of your opponents (or you) would need a 40 point lead to Claim Win, so this wider gap means matches will often go deeper into the endgame which can often be used to your advantage if you have strong endgame knowledge

I certainly agree, chasing a dead king is a waste of your moves. You could better use them to strengthen your position or get a queen since every move counts. You made a good point. 

sometimes he roams himself directly into a mating net like directly in front of your pawns or in the center of the board which is hilarious, and then you need to just finish it. But also sometimes at the end if it's just pawns and minor pieces, he can get involved and land sneaky forks against your opponents (or you too if you're unlucky) 

or capture one of your pieces, which is painful to watch. 

Great post. I think the thing that may help a lot of 2k rated players is recognizing the massive points difference between being 1st and 2nd/3rd. Psychologically I understand it feels bad to lose points, so with 3 players left, there's often the "loser" mentality of simply avoiding being 3rd by say attacking the weakest player or continuing to cooperate with your across even though he's much stronger/has way more points. But if you spend all that effort to "secure" 2nd, you've only netted something like +4 points (+2 for 2nd vs. -2 for 3rd), whereas going for 1st may yield something like 20 points. The question you have to ask yourself then is if you'd rather have a shot of getting +20 or keep on settling for +4 five times to achieve the same points gain. If you are rated similarly as the remaining players and have a roughly equal position, it seems fair to assume you have a 1/3 chance of getting first, and the expected value of 1/3 * 20 is higher than 4.