4 Player Chess Teams: Tactics

In 4PC, tactics are quite important to win. Whether it is Standard FFA or Variant Teams, tactics can be seen everywhere. But how exactly do you find them, and how can you apply them? In this post, I will be taking you through some relatively basic tactical ideas, not much different from the ones you would see in regular, 1v1 chess.

Checks

Checks, believe it or not, are the most important thing to look out for in 4PC (except for checkmates). Just like in 2PC, you should scan for checks that you and your opponent have. This is especially important in 4PC, as there are more players; one player could put you in check while another takes advantage and captures your piece, which is defended three different ways, but you can't do anything about it since you are in check. Here is a quick example:

As you can see in the image, it was yellow to move and yellow decides to take blue's defended knight on k9. Why? Well, yellow does this because red can check blue, forcing blue to react to the threat on his king rather than recapturing the rook. (Note that green could sacrifice his bishop to red on the i2 square with check, which would most likely lead to a draw.) However, if you are going to apply a tactic like this, make sure the move order is correct. I can't stress this enough to players: if you mess up the move order, there is a chance you might end up blundering the game itself, rather than winning it. Red goes first, followed by blue, then yellow, and finally green. 

Pins

You are probably familiar with a pin: a piece is "pinned" to another piece by a long-range, or rider-type piece. Here is an example of how it is used in 4PC Teams:

As you can see, yellow was able to capture blue's knight without fear of losing their queen because red could pin the blue pawn to the blue king. This position is a common position you might see in beginner-level games, and just know that, regardless of what blue does in this position, it is a checkmate in one move and red/yellow win.

Those are the two most commonly used tactics in this game, but there are also many, many more complicated ones, such as...

Queen Sacrifices

Queen sacrifices are beautiful, tactical ways to win the game (usually on the spot). They aren't that cool though, in certain positions which you might start to see regularly. Here are two common positions which lead to forced mate with the first move being a queen sacrifice:

As you can see here, green is able to sacrifice their queen because yellow does not have their queen out in a position to be able to check green or blue and interrupt the mating sequence on red, who does not have a suitable defense to blue/green's attack. With the best play, red will get checkmated in two moves. Here is another position:

In this case, once again, yellow is not in the optimal position to disrupt blue/green's attack, and red can't do anything to stop it either. 

This is it for now: I will update the post later when I have more time.

Very detailed and good forum. 

make a post about the tactics when the queens are all traded plz

Thanks for all the teams posts! Keep up the great work!

thanks great forum!!!

sure will! that one will be called "4 Player Chess Teams: Endgames" or something

cool, thanks

Change the first sentence where you said tactics are everything because that is just plain false. Other than that nice post.

done

In the first picture you switched the place of blue and green's pieces, unless this is a REALLY weird game or your colors are VERY messed up.

dang it! sorry what was I thinking

I did a queen sacrifice in this game:

https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess?g=9418394

The combination of moves goes:

21.Qxc10+! (the queen sacrifice!) 21. ... 11xc10 Bxc10+.

common idea when a player opens their weak diagonal to the king, nice!

Thank you!