Chaturaji: History on Chess.com, Openings, and Trading

I'm assuming that many of you don't have a 4PC background. https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess this is the 4-Player Chess server, where Chaturaji was first added on chess.com.

Note that I will call the ships from the variants server "rooks" because that's what they are.

First of all, this is what the chaturaji variant was historically:

The cannon is a rook, and the boat is an alfil (moves diagonally two squares in any direction, jumping over anything in between). There is a weird rule called boat triumph, but that's not important.

@dirtguylawra added chaturaji to chess.com, adapted because 4-Player Chess did not have boats or cannons. The first to be added was Chaturaji BNRK, which is exactly what it sounds like: our current chaturaji position with rooks and bishops switched. It also did not have capture-the-king or 3 point checkmate. 

BNRK was much sharper than our current position. It was discovered that in Teams mode (red and yellow work against blue and green, you lose if your teammate gets checkmated. Your rating change is based on your "team rating" vs. your opponents' "team rating", which is the average of you and your partner's ratings weighted 2/3 towards the higher-rated teammate.) red and yellow had a forced win, so Chaturaji RNBK was added as well. This is the same starting position as the chaturaji we have in variants server, but still without 3 pt mate and capture-the-king.

Then @hest1805 had the idea to add 3 pt mate and capture-the-king (and also added alternative teams (red and green vs yellow and blue). Now we have the same chaturaji we play in variants server, but this is default as 1/4|0 hyper time control and called Chaturaji Hyper Fiesta. Hyper fiesta was, and still is, by far the most popular variant on 4-Player Chess. There is a monthly fiesta arena which lasts a week, and regular weekly arenas as well.

Now I will discuss the evolution of openings in hyper fiesta (which are the same in 1|5 chaturaji, obviously). There are three openings that make sense:

1. The standard opening:

This opening was the first "mainline" of hyper fiesta, emphasizing a rapid attack on the left.  As red, I cannot recommend this opening, as green can easily trade off his knight for your bishop. In blitz, the standard opening only makes sense when it is necessary to avoid mate (if your right plays the degenerate opening, or your opposite and your right both play the fianchetto opening, or if your right is a known degenerate player and plays fianchetto opening). In hyper, it is the only opening where you can premove.

2. The Fianchetto Opening:

Though this setup is credited to me in 4PC circles, I did not create this system. The first person I saw playing this was @JCrossover08 , now @nuts_yci . I merely popularized it. The best-case scenario is much better than the standard system; you can often trade your knight for the left's bishop or rook, and you can trade bishops with your opposite if they are a decent player (the whole point of this system is to facilitate bishop trades. Bishops are trash overpriced pieces; they are worse than knights on this board (knights have double-checking potential) and yet they are worth as much as rooks. If you trade bishops with your opposite and the other two players do not,  you will have a hard time losing.). This is the current mainline for strong players in hyper fiesta.

3. The Degenerate Opening

This has been around since the creation of hyper fiesta, possibly popularized by @e4bc4qh5qf7 . It's commonly associated with degeneracy because back when the Standard Opening was the mainline, this was pretty effective at catching players off-guard and killing them, but it wasn't a good strategy because the other two players would trade rooks while you killed your left, and you would get 3rd place. Now that Fianchetto is mainstream, this isn't a bad strategy anymore. Killing your left means that you will not get last, and it almost always also means that you will not get 3rd, because you will trade bishops with your opposite, and the other player will not. The other pros and cons are the same as the fianchetto opening. I would say this is probably the best choice for hyper chaturaji on the variants server (if you care about your reputation, do not try this in the 4-Player Chess server as it is associated with degeneracy and people may get mad at you). However, in blitz, there is one other consideration:

As you can see, red's king position is weakened by the king-pawn push, which makes green's attack stronger. Red has wasted a few moves trading off his bishop, and now he can't comfortably make his king safer. You may ask "What is the difference between this and fianchetto, where red will often push d3 anyway?" The main issue with the Degenerate Opening is that you waste 3-4 moves developing a piece and trading it right at the start of the game, leaving your position very vulnerable. If you change up the move order, it's just fianchetto with extra steps (literally, you use 2 bishop moves to fianchetto and play b3 anyway). In blitz, where the chance to eliminate the left immediately is very slim, I don't think this setup is a good idea.

Basically, I still think fianchetto is the best opening (as long as you don't get mated in a few moves).

In hyper fiesta, the idea is to trade anything as much as possible. Obviously, this isn't a great idea in blitz. So how should you trade in chaturaji blitz? Here is what I have gathered so far:

Note that if you trade a rook for a bishop, but also win a knight, that is not a trade. That is trading up, and is almost always good.

Pawns:

Do not trade just for the sake of trading. If you are attacking your left, it is fine, or if it facilitates a good trade, etc. If you play well, you will probably be able to promote pawns towards the end of the game, so trading them for 1 pt isn't great. Still, I don't think you should waste time avoiding pawn trades.

Knights:

Sadly, knight trades are fine. If you cannot trade your knight for a bishop or rook in the foreseeable future, trading knights is good. Knights used to be untradable with the 5 pt double-check (and 20 pt triple-check), but for some reason, they made changed it to freaking 1 pt double-check. I'm not going to turn this post into a 10-page rant about 1-pt double-check, which makes the game dull and less skill-oriented. MOVING ON. As I was saying, trading knights is fine unless you can trade up with them. Naturally, you should never trade rooks or bishops for knights.

Bishops:

I mentioned this already, but bishops are trash pieces which are not worth 5 points; always trade if possible. Still, I don't think you should ever trade them for a knight. Trading for a rook is obviously great.

Rooks: 

In the early stage of the game, trading your first rook is fine; they don't do anything else with all those pawns and knights getting in the way. Once the position is clearing up, and your rook can start harassing kings and loose pieces, you need to have a good reason to trade. As for trading rooks with bishops, the only acceptable reason is "I will win on points" or "Otherwise I will lose on points".

Kings:

If you do maths and you win no matter what after giving your king for material, then sure. Always expect the remaining players to trade as much as possible, because they will. Do not sacrifice your king if you do not have a guaranteed win, unless the only alternative is worse.

Anyway, that's my pointless information landslide on chaturaji. I'm not gonna include anything about strategy in general, because I'm bored and I want to do something else lmao

Thoughts? Corrections? 10-page long digressions about why 5 pt double-check is better than 1-pt double-check?

Fianchetto opening is best.

Pretty much agree with everything, although obviously I'm a less credible source

My only objection is that boats are way cooler and you should have used those in the diagrams 8)

Fianchetto gang rise up

Aha, thank you so much for this wonderful and helpful article

I've been always wondering what opening style is the best (d3, c3, or b3), how many opening styles are, and what the steps of each opening style are. And this article really answers a lot of my questions

Moreover, this article also tells us a knowledgeable history of chaturaji on chess dot com, how it was added, and the key people who created and developed it

Through this article, I also really appreciate your skills to write articles, analyze, and lecture

I'd love to have a chance to read more and more articles written by you like this one, BoxJellyFish

Thank you again and again 💖

I like The Degenerate Opening xd. I think that green should be obliged to make that opening unlike the other colors, since it runs the risk of being caught by the king.

lol unfortunately I could not use boats; I needed to use arrows, and variants server apparently doesn't allow spectators to draw arrows (screenshots are from 4-Player Chess server).

Remember that all openings I mentioned are playable and good; otherwise I would not have mentioned them . The Degenerate Opening basically puts your left into an uncomfortable position, but it also puts you into an uncomfortable position when your right starts attacking you. Therefore, it works best with a weak right-side or a strong left-side. I have found that fianchetto is more balanced in this regard; it works well regardless of the strengths of the flanks. 

On a side note, I have been experimenting recently with a counter to the Degenerate Opening. If your left plays Degenerate and your right plays Standard (which is still the most common opening), you can develop your knight (Nc3) before your left develops their bishop (Bd2), stopping them from developing the bishop. This kind of ruins the Degenerate opening unless their opposite helps... which raises the question, when should you help your opposite ("teaming", "cooperation", "taking advantage", "being idiots", "****", "WILL YOU STOP TEAMING", there are many names for this )? I will write another article (tomorrow probably) about chaturaji teaming and "courtesy" in general (and maybe another history lesson lol).

We used to be able to draw arrows as spectators dunno what happened.

Anyways thanks for the cool info

YES!!! go on Fianchetto. I love that opening very much and I play it every game (Unless the guy to my right plays 1st pawn) Anyway I really like this article and I hope you make more.

I definitely like the Fianchetto the most. There's one very specific way for the player on your right to counter it though. If they push the rook pawn enough spaces and do it quickly they can easily open the rooks to each other. If they try to trade while you trade your bishop with your opposite, you lose your rook and your bishop, this has happened to me a couple times. There's an easy way to stop it though, you just have to know when to cover your bishop with the f-pawn (or your color's equivalent), or trade before your right opponent can get to you.

Was planning to discuss this at length in my next post

As a rule of thumb, always expect opponents to do what you don't want them to do. In this case, it translates to taking your bishop and rook on the same move. I will leave off whether taking bishop/rook is even a good idea for the opponents until next post, but yes, just in general don't trade with two players at once. 

Out of curiosity, what is the boat triumph rule?

If your boat move creates a 2-by-2 square filled with boats (there were already 3 boats in the 2-by-2 area and you moved boat into the other square), then you instantly capture the other 3 boats. It's a silly rule imo, seems very difficult to make any impact on the game

Does it still apply?

that seems like such an impossible scenario

how do you even reach a position like that?

no it doesn't still apply lol

remember, boat moved like alfil (two squares in any diagonal direction, hopping over obstacles). The piece that looks like a boat in chaturaji is not a boat, it is a rook. You're right, it's kinda very improbable, and the rule is a bit silly

if talk about history, can add that one of the popularizers of Chaturaji BNRK Team, and as a consequence of all Chaturaji, was CubsRock09, he actively farm the rating on this variant and invited other players. I personally learned from him about this game, as well as about the theory of this game. There was also a funny period when the rating FFA Chaturaji Diplomacy was popular, but it all ended with the fact that Diplomacy was moved to the casual due to frequent prearranged teaming, again through the efforts of Cubs)

lol diplomacy FFA chaturaji? Sounds interesting...

Yeah, cubs (also known as sneakycheckmate, also known as mrmercedes, also known as lykosreaper... etc.) played a lot of chaturaji RNBK alternative teams (was his favorite variant). We played against the Phoenix bots and gained like 100 rating from them lol

If you know the players you're playing with wouldn't prearrange teams, FFA diplomacy chaturaji could be very fun. (Sometimes terribly frustrating, no doubt, but fun nonetheless.)

Thank you for writing these instructive articles.

Openings:

I found this game on the variants server a few months ago and it intrigued me. I started to try to play and was mated. I analyzed my quick loss and tried again. Because of my late introduction to the game I didn't know red's 1. d3 was 'degenerate' and it became the main line in my analysis. Opening the bishops diagonal to the king on your left forces that king to give himself air, which led me to the standard opening.

I played the standard as green against two degenerate neighbors and they mated me quickly, back to the drawing boards.

As Fiat says above, if red and yellow are degenerate then green must also play this way. 

Finally I had the pleasure to watch someone play the fianchetto opening but with 2.Bh3 instead of 2.Bg2. Now I have adopted this third decent opening into my repertoire.

Trading:

As I have played a bit of 4pc FFA I understand that trading weakens your position while gaining points and in the initial phase of the game the points aren't worth the bad position. In chaturaji I felt that trades were good even in the opening, many games later my opinion has evolved a bit. Now I feel that keeping one or two pieces to play with and trading the other one or two is pretty good. Having read this article it seems that the best piece to trade is the bishop and play with knight and rook.

Sharing your knowledge of this game is very generous of you. I hope it brings the level of play of the members of this club up to a level where we deserve the name. 

Sorry for rambling ,

Kyle