But is it teaming?

All games anonymous would eliminate most of it. I think you wouldn't even need WTA then. Yes they offer anonymous games A you usually have to wait a fair amount of time for  a game to start  B people can join the same anonymous game really easily

Nahh. An even better solution exists. Teaming is a solved problem.

yeah, I like that solution too, but people didn't like the complex math in the background.

@wheres85 I’ve been trying  to understand the problem you’re having by repeatedly asking you to provide 3 games in which you lose to problematic teaming and 3 games in which you lose to fair play, and also provide a description of what fair play looks like. What are we supposed to do about an issue that you’re not defining / clearly describing? 

@Skeftomilos I have repeatedly brought up the point that the incentive for non-teaming needs to come from the game rules, and not from artificial guidelines built on top of them. The rules of the game themselves should dictate best play, and not artificial rules built on top of them. (e.g. laws of physics rather than human law). What you are suggesting is akin to those opposing Steinitz discovering new ideas in chess in the early 20th century. They think that chess "should look a certain way": sacrifices, being forced to accept them, unsound play. But the rules of play themselves should dictate best play, not somebody's idea of how the game should be; your suggestion of policing things game by game is as ridiculous as arbiters looking over every game and making sure player's don't play moves that wouldn't fit the romantic concept of the game!

Now I'm not saying that FFA SHOULD descend into a team-fest; but rather that the course of action to disincentives teaming needs to come from the rules of the game rather than vague rules of conduct. 

I just play as you can see ive played over 2000 games Im at least 75 sure any time i report. I'm not computer literate to provide links but if  you went into my game history any rational human being with knowledge of the game could honesty see i was teamed up on probably  800 of those at minimum probably more ive overcame a team and gotten a win in 200 of those

We can certainly teach you how to find and get the links to these games. But you certainly can't expect one of us to wade through your games and try to guess which ones you are referring to here?

@GustavKlimtPaints yes, I know. I have also repeatedly brought up that solving the teaming problem by adjusting the game mechanics is impossible. Teaming, if allowed, will always remain an advantageous strategy. What you try to accomplice is no more feasible than squaring the circle with ruler and divider. Your intentions are noble and good, but the mathematical realities ensure that you'll fail, however hard you try.

Look at the current situation, where you are allowed to team to your heart's desire, provided that you don't always team with the same partner again and again. Are players happier than before? Has the number of reports been reduced? Is the job of the administrators any easier? Now in order to resolve a report for teaming, instead of having to review a single game you must review multiple games, after painfully retrieving them from the game archive. Hard for the players, hard for the administrators, still subjective and artificial. And doesn't solve any problem, because what most players dislike is not prearranged teaming but teaming per se.

As a reminder, the simple and straightforward solution of disallowing teaming has never been tried. The rules were placed, but were never enforced. The excuse for not enforcing the rules has been the lack of a definition for "teaming", and the small number of available administrators. The real reason was the reluctance to make unhappy some top players, that had established themselves to the leaderboard by practicing teaming for too long.

Squaring the circle is possible, you just need a French curve on top of the compass and ruler

Since we're talking about mathematics, take a look at basic game theory for "games" (as used in game theory). In any system of more than two individuals working in their own self-interest in a rational way, the main dynamic you can study is basically patterns of cooperation. It's mathematically an inherent part of such a system, so your idea to remove it completely is the more mathematically hopeless task in my opinion.

I also urge you to post here 3 games in which you lost to what is in your view fair play, so we can dissect them together a little bit...no one has bothered to do this yet

I didn't know that, but using French curves is cheating. Ha ha! :-)

I don't understand what is mathematically hopeless about disallowing teaming. In which way are mathematics going to impede you from enforcing the rule?

About providing examples of fair play, I won't do that. Fair play is just playing by the rules. If the rules allow teaming, then teaming is fair play. If the rules prohibit teaming, then teaming is not fair play. Would you like a definition of teaming instead?

What I'm asking is for you to provide a few examples of games you lost where teaming (by your own standards) occurred, as opposed to where it didn't so we can compare and contrast, is that so difficult? Everyone will have a somewhat different standard on when teaming has occurred, so you can think of it as trying to help me understand your definition of it, if you will.

Teaming has never occurred in my own games. Would you like some examples of teaming and not-teaming from games of other players?

My definition: What constitutes teaming is for the teamed players to coordinate their pieces, and form a combined army. They support their teammate's pieces, instead of capturing them.

so what about scenarios in which it is to your advantage not to capture someone else's piece, for example? Are two players creating threats on another already forming a combined army? If not, where does it cross the threshold? 

Concurrent threats: not teaming
Combining armies: teaming
Not capturing an undefended enemy piece because it's advantageous to do so: teaming is advantageous. If you have another reason for not capturing a free piece, it is usually obvious. In case of doubts, the administrators could proceed with warnings instead of penalties.

So what about concurrent threat situations in which player 1 (red) attacks player 4 (green), then player 3 (yellow) plays a move that also attacks player 4, but his attacking move hangs a piece to player 1. The player's logic is that player 1 will have a good follow up move on player 4 after player 4's turn to continue to press his attack and it would be more beneficial to seize the moment and weaken that player further than take player 3's piece which is doing nothing against player 1's position. Is this still ok in your book or is that starting to look like teaming?

PS: checking your profile in the game, I see you have only played 16 games of FFA total??

@GustavKlimtPaints I consider as teaming any play that is indistinguishable from teaming. In your example, if yellow attacked green with a piece that is undefended and can by captured by red, and red avoided capturing it in his next couple of moves, this is indistinguishable from red supporting yellow's pieces and together forming a combined army, so it's teaming.

About my activity as a player, it is true that I have played most of my games at the time when the games were not archived (before the 11 Sep 2018 update). Recently I have been mostly inactive for my own reasons. Why is this relevant?

Ok, so we've reached the threshold where it becomes teaming for you...interesting that one scenario is acceptable and one isn't. So if you had the this same scenario but in one of them player 3's piece is defended and in one it isn't, it changes from acceptable concurrent attacking, as you call it, to teaming. Other than that, the result could be the exact same if player 1 chooses not to capture player 3's piece; for example, player 3's knight let's say ends up capturing player 4's rook so they are an extra piece down now. To me these scenarios are the exact same thing, just another tactical move because it is clearly in player 1's favor to continue to attack player 4, rather than capture a piece that is not threatening their own position; if they capture the knight, player 4 still has a rook they could use in their defense or even to attack player 1, while the knight is far away, and will still be working against player 4. So the piece is in fact "defended" by its role in the position, even if it superficially doesn't appear so to the untrained eye. So to me, this is tactical awareness, more than teaming.

What I actually like about FFA is the need for this tactical awareness, in order to attack effectively, you need to be aware of ideas like this when you can put your pieces en prise and reap the benefits; you also need to be extremely imaginative and aware in defending against ideas like these; I am convinced from having gone over a lot of reported "teamers" that 99% of the time when people are accusing others of teaming they fail to see that they have made positional mistakes early in the game or are simply missing tactics; maybe we should change the name of the reporting reason to "reported for tactics"? Rather than learn from their mistakes, they go on to play a new game and make themselves fall into the same pit over and over, while conveniently blaming the "teamers"  

@GustavKlimtPaints in the minority of cases where a distinction would be difficult, I trust the trained eyes of the administrators to distinguish between teaming and tactics. Meanwhile we will get rid of the blatant teaming that most players dislike. Like this and this for example.

(examples taken from the topics An actual case of collusion in FFA? and Excessive Teaming by Blue and Green)

High rating games are now WTA (winner takes all)as of the last month or two, so those examples are irrelevant; WTA is a completely different beast, so maybe if you haven't played lately your understanding of how the game is being played is outdated (I don't mean that in an offensive way, just a factual way, since you said you haven't played since September I guess), since playing for 2nd is not a possibility now.