Chess 4-player Is It Sick or is it Cool?

Post your opinions here please. 

What is 4-player chess????? 4-player chess is a variant of chess that uses very similar chess rules between 4 players that is more of a positional game. The goal of winning 4-player chess is to be the man at the end of the game who has more points than all of your opponents. 

4-player chess is a variant of chess that uses very similar chess rules between 4 players that is more of a positional game. The goal of winning 4-player chess is to be the man at the end of the game who has more points than all of your opponents. 

Is it against the rules to gang up on an opponent or opponents with a partner during a game????

No, it is not. The rules do not specify!!!! According to ignoble who is part of chess.com staff and is helping develop this beta program it is not. 

So in the rules of singles, there is no rules against teaming!!!!! This is war gentlemen. Chess itself is a war over the board. 

Now, is it ethical to team up????????

I believe it is truly an ethical issue. At the moment it is not against the game. That is what makes this game different from chess. It is a 4 player. More options available and less control. Whether one likes it or not, teaming is going to happen. One must learn to adapt to this by disabling the chat or they themselves persuading to team up against a player or more than one player. I find this extremely enjoyable and challenging. One who is good at persuading will find this to be easier and a nice skill to have in this variant of chess. That is all I have to say on the matter right now. But I am open to hearing your opinions. If you are against it, what do you propose for chess.com if they decide in the future to ban teaming, to keep track of whether is teaming or not? That is my question. 

It is cool. I love it.

The suggestions were published in the chat already. For example, if you do not see the names and rating of your opponents you can not decide to attack one of them, because he/she: 

1. Is low rated = weak.

2, Is high rated = his fur is more expensive.

3. Ate your bishop in the previous game, so you have to take revenge.

4.-10. etc.

By the way, It may be a good idea to hide the ratings during the first N (20? 30?) moves only. And then reveal them. In the middle of the game people tend to make the decisions looking at the current position, not at the opponents' names, photos or ratings.

Interesting suggestion. But this will not stop teaming. When I see people team they do not tend to look at rating. Instead, they tend to look at if someone is weak. At least that is how it is in the 1600s. 

> At least that is how it is in the 1600s. 

My rating is 1701 right now, so we both have experience in 1600s.

> But this will not stop teaming.

First of all we need a definition of the teaming. What is it exactly? And when we define it we can fight it.

When 2 players attack the 3rd player at the same time for a few moves, but then attack one another. Was it a team? Does it change anything if one of them offered to make a team to another? Does it matter if the 2nd one accepted that 'verbally' or just kept silence? What if they did not mate the 'victim' but just ate a few his pieces?

So, what is a crime?

Teaming is when more than one player attacks one or more players. Typically they will fight against one opponent at a time. They can verbally acknowledge it or does not matter. It is when they work together to gain an advantage. I do not think it is a crime personally. It is part of the game in my opinion. It makes it a challenge. Now, according to chess.com staff teaming beforehand, pre teaming is not allowed. But I do not see how they will stop this. 

If this is a definition of teaming then it happens in every single game. Seriously.

4-player chess is amazing and challenging, especially 2 vs 2 mode. And extremely funny! Love it.

Yes. I agree. I believe team is ok. It is part of the game. It would be very hard for chess.com to prevent it. My guess is when the teaming feature comes back where you can choose friends to team with, then the singles variant will be less popular. 

Personally it is the type of teaming that requires communication that I don't like (but since it is allowed, I will just disable chat when it happens). If two players want to both promote a pawn and let each other promote, then I think the first player should take a risk with his pawn move and hope the other player will agree and promote his pawn instead of taking. Let the move speak what the intentions are and not the chat. I am not a big fan when the players try to communicate before taking that risk. imo, any kind of strategic discussion in chat is something I dislike.

Yes, but if they team before hand. People who played the previous round might of already teamed up. So it does not prevent it 100% of the time. 

I agree that the teaming prevented by /stop-chat is not a big problem. The problem is those that use some other communication tool with each other or decides to team before the game. If 2 players completely ignore each others threats and leave pieces hanging against each other, then something is clearly wrong. I think this is very uncommon now though with the abort option being limited.

I also think many people tend to be too quick to judge that 2 players are teaming. But as @BabYagun mentioned I am not sure if everyone uses the same definition of teaming.