4 player tactics

I haven't found a good explanation in this thread for the resign when you're ahead 16 points. Could you please explain?

I would agree with you in the case of normal chess, but as I mentioned in the thread A new, different (chess) game, I don't think 4 player chess should be treated as normal chess.  

The goal of the game is not to linger until the end like in normal chess. The objective is to reach the most points. In some cases, the player who is last on the board does not win, and thus the idea of being mated or "resigning" is not the opposite of winning. Sometimes, like in this case, it is in your interest to resign in order to win. The reason it is a good idea is becuse it goes along with the logic of the game. And as the old saying goes, don't hate the player (or the players' strategy), hate the game.

I like the way Battlemind24 put it. Think of it as a tactical retreat.

I have used the Resignation to win a few games now. Never really feels good doing it when the other has a shot at winning. If its part of the game I'm good with using it but I do think it is something that the powers to be need to consider on how much it can/should be used in the final version. 

A suggestion to consider for later on this..  When their are two players left and the 1st reign's their score is deducted by 1/3 of the total points the other player could get if they took all of the 1st players pieces before ck mate. (or you could add that to the 2nd players total). This way you can be a bit more fair about if the game is truly out of reach or not. I can tell you I lost a game to this where I was down y 20 points with only a few pieces left.. but I had 3 queens and he had most of his starting pieces. I also lost a game where one person was at about 40 points to me and another who had 20 points. I focused on taking out the 40 point player first because of this ability to resign. It worked and we were down to 2 players about 20 points and he resigned came in 3rd? the guy with 40 won.. where if we traded down pieces the guy with 40 would have come in 3rd.. *Food for thought  

me too

the first game that happened with that when I played is my opponent resigns, and then he/she wins

I can't believe I missed that.

Pretend this is a 4 player board. Here is a fun interaction:

The thing that happens is not what you might expect. Currently stalemate=mate, so the game ends after Ka8 since black is stalemated (even though it is not blacks move). Additionally the player that makes the last checkmating move is awarded 15 points which was black. Qc7+ was a huge blunder.

About stalemate, that explains a lot!!  That explains 3 or 4 of my games that ended and I could not fathom how.  I knew I wasn't in checkmate, but in hindsight the game behaved as if I was.

As for the general topic, here are some tactics I learned

 - If you have sound on, it makes a sound for when it is YOUR TURN! I was whining about the lack of this yesterday, but today I tried it with the headphones on.  For deaf people, the problem still exists: a brighter and/or bolder and/or bigger notification is needed that I need to make my move or lose time.

- Obviously, avoid trading

- If someone is pushing the QP 6 times early, the player to the right can fire a pawn across his territory to interfere. This seems to work better than using knights or bishops to stop it. Another QP or pawn to intercept it from the side is also pretty effective.

 - The priority is your own position. The last thing you want is your pieces getting taken. But the next most important priority is not to let any one other player prosper too much. So far keeping these in mind seems pretty successful for me.

 - And also if someone is acting aggressive towards you, you have to act aggressive back (tit for tat).  They are testing you so you have to show some strength I think.

 - Hang in there.  I  won one just now that felt like a great success and I had lost my whole Kingside but fortunately I had castled Queenside so I managed to outlast the others.  I was lucky two of them lost on time, really.

Green to move? What would you play?

Pinning the blue rook is mate, but looses the queen which red can take without any player interfering. Since many players remain I would move my pawn that is diagonally behind my knight to hopefully get a promotion soon.

Moving the knight to threaten reds bishop is also an option since red probably wants to mate blue without loosing his queen.

It's really impossible to tell if mate is good without knowing the points

@Martin0 Yes mate is available by pinning the blue rook with the queen. I just thought it was so amazing that you could deliver mate in such a way. Points are important, regardless I thought it was a really elegant mate.

Yes, likely I would not go for "green Qb6-b9" pinning the blue rook causing blue to be mate, but sacrificing my queen to be a queen down to both red and yellow.

(The only reason for me to do this would be if all the other players had a much higher rating than myself, so I could gain rating considerably by at least coming in third.)

One calm possibility would be simply green Qb6xh6, taking the yellow pawn with my queen (and maybe even looking at taking the blue pawn on a13 next or so), calmly taking a slight little bit of profit while keeping by position really stable and calm to minimize the risk of being attacked.

One interesting possibility would be to play green Qb6-d6 here. Annoying red a little because I am eyeing "his a2 pawn". And speculating that if red does something about this small threat, such as "red a2-a3" or "red Nd2-c3"  or "red Rd1-d5" (notation for squares seen from red side), leaving his red queen on the square it is, and possibly the other players continuing "blue Rf13-f14", yellow "Qe14-e12+", then it would happen to be my chance to create a mate for blue by playing green Qd6-d14#, this time pinning the blue rook without sacrificing my own queen.

I like this rule, so if anyone has a problem with it please make sure to tell me!

blue to move:

green to move:

hint: yellow is @Ne2willdo is red is @Fukadzume

I guess you think yellow will eat blue queen and then red will eat blue b7 pawn, so it is a checkmate. But in this case yellow will eat blue queen at the very next move, so it is unlikely to happen if yellow and blue are not in a pre-team. Yellow will not eat the queen, because he is not sure blue will eat the pawn.

red may or may not opt to pay a queen for a mate. given green will be screwed in the sandwich position i think i'd take it all day long.

and what if it only costs a bishop?

after people have played teams for while, i think this stuff might become standard among decent players, even in the all-vs-all. if red+yellow can screw both opponents in one move, they probably should. @ne2willdo says he enjoys playing with (read "opposite") strong players like fuka because of this.

i might still be convinced otherwise, but as blue i can think of only one move here.

althogh i agree with you bab, it is still very unlikely in todays games.

ok: yellow is Ne2willdo and red is fukadzume.

If blue assumes yellow does not want to risk his queen there are many moves in the first position. Otherwise blue could trade queens, but that seems unnecessary. It is also important not to forget green in the equation.

3. ... c9 Qxc9 k8

4.Bb9# ... Qxb9 Bxg2+

5.Nxd2

Red got 25 points, but lost queen and bishop.

Yellow got 6 points

Green got 9 points, but lost bishop.

Yellow have to assume that red would be happy with that result. If red is not, then yellow will lose a queen to a pawn. I'm pretty no one should want to take that risk and I would probably not take the mate if I was red.