FFA Championship Rules Discussion

4pc community members, please provide feedback, opinions, and comments on the rules, questions, and proposals below:

What did you all think of the current championship, and do you have anything you would like to change for next year? In addition, what are your opinions on the following questions and proposals?

Q1: Would participants prefer 1/7 or a different time control? If so, what?

Q2: Would you prefer “First to two wins/1.25” (current format) or “First to three wins/2.25” for the quarterfinals and semi-finals?

Q3: Suggestions on how to make 4pc championships accessible to a wider audience?

Q4: Opinions on the championship containing 12 LB players + 16 Arena Qualified players? 

Q5: What should happen if a player loses because they disconnected?

Proposal 1: 

Change tiebreak from # of won games and then score of most recent game to: 

Tiebreak suggestion A: “The tiebreaker for future reference and future editions should not be the last game, but the series as a whole. Meaning all previous results count towards the tiebreak with no preference for last game (unless identical tiebreak).” 

Tiebreak suggestion B: A. tiebreak by # of games won B. tiebreak by # of games in second and third C. tiebreak by total # of points scored

Proposal 2: 

Old Language: “[if you qualify], you must refrain from playing other Qualifier Arenas for this Championship. Failure to do so may result in forfeiture of qualification for the arena previously selected from. As a standard, the 1st offense is a disqualification from arena qualified in 2nd offense is a disqualification from the 2025 FFA W4PCC itself.” 

New Language: “[if you qualify], you must refrain from playing other Qualifier Arenas for this Championship. Failure to do so may result in forfeiture of qualification for the arena previously selected from or the tournament. If participants violate this rule while they appear to be unaware of it, then they should be warned (directly contacted through direct or game chat, or other means). If they do it a second time, they are disqualified from the arena and may be disqualified from the tournament. If participants violate this rule willfully they are disqualified from the tournament. This rule should be mentioned in pinned messages.” 

(In addition, it would be good if players were locked out from playing in tournaments by the system, and then this issue could be avoided)

Proposal 3: 

Old Language: “Players may be disqualified and replaced upon failure to arrive before the 15th minute after the hour of the match time.”

New Language: “Players may be disqualified and replaced upon failure to arrive before the 15th minute after the hour of the match time. If said player shows up before a replacement is found and rhetorically agreed upon by TD/player they will be allowed to play. If said player shows up after a replacement is found but before the game starts, they will not be allowed to play.”

Please bring up any questions, comments, suggestions, and concerns you may have!

—

Current Rules for 2025 Championship:

Schedule of the 2025 Modern FFA W4PCC:

March 19 00:00 UTC: The top 12 from FFA rapid leaderboard are selected as the first 12 candidates. Those candidates will qualify for Round 2 and play in any of the March 30 time slots (0:00, 12:00, 16:00, or 20:00 UTC) on a first come first serve basis. Only the top 3 will be guaranteed their first choice. Players on the leaderboard will be messaged and expected to reply prior to March 20 00:00 UTC with their preferences of times they would like to compete on March 29, in order. Replacements will be #13-20 in order from that leaderboard, and then the highest rated player following* the Tournament Director (TD) or referee in charge.

March 22-23 00:00, 12:00, 16:00, and 20:00 UTC: 8x 3-hour 1+5 Rapid 2400+ qualifier arenas, top 2 each arena qualify. Games will be rated and anonymous. Players that fall below 2400 Rapid during the Arena can still complete the arena. While the arenas are 1+5 (normally a blitz time control), they are treated as Rapid Ratings for these arenas. Arena scoring will be 3-1-1-0. Streak bonuses will be removed.

March 29 (Round 1) 00:00, 12:00, 16:00, and 20:00 UTC: 16 players that qualified from the arenas (or substitutes thereof) will battle to 4 in first-to-1.25. 4 on March 29 00:00 UTC, 4 on March 29 12:00 UTC, 4 on March 29 16:00 UTC, and 4 on March 29, 20:00 UTC. Replacements will be #3 through last place from the arena the no-show player qualified from, and then the highest rated player following* the TD or referee. Games will be rated, anonymous, and 1+7.

March 30 (Round 2) 00:00, 12:00, 16:00, and 20:00 UTC: The 4 that advance (1 per time slot) will join the 12 leaderboard candidates (3 each time slot) in a first-to-1.25. Replacements from the leaderboard were discussed above, but replacements from March 29 will be in order from #2-4 from that time slot, and then the highest rated player following* the TD or referee. Games will be rated, anonymous, and 1+7.

April 5-6 (Finals) 18:00 UTC: The final four will play for the Championship in a best-of-9 (first-to-2.25) with a maximum of 5 games per day. Games will be rated, anonymous, and 1+7.

For all games, pawns promote on the 8th to a 1-point queen, and the en passant and dead king walk modes will be enabled.

*following is defined as in the same spectator/game chat as the TD/referee on duty at the 15th minute after the hour of the match time. Players may be disqualified and replaced upon failure to arrive before the 15th minute after the hour of the match time. To find the spectator/game chat that the TD (fourplayerchess) or referee is in, please click their profile in the Variants Server (either through the Archive or friends list) and then click "Observing".

Prize Money Disclaimer: Currently pending is a funding of $1000 from chess.com for the 2025 Modern FFA World Champion. Please understand this may take days, weeks, or a month or two to process. The tournament director may refer questions regarding prize money to staff/support. Only one player will be awarded prize money, and that player must agree to use the email directly linked to his/her chess.com account to find the link to the Prize Money when Awarded. Please note that the link may appear in your junk/trash/spam folder, so be sure to check those soon after you win the Championship!

A detailed handbook may be organized and updated for this championship; however, as this is currently categorized as a 2025 Event, rules and eligibility may be superseded by the 2025 Event Rulebook ( https://www.chess.com/article/view/chesscom-event-rulebook ), the Competitive Events Policy ( https://www.chess.com/legal/events ), the Fair Play Policy ( https://www.chess.com/legal/fair-play ), or other chess.com community guidelines, each on a case-by-case basis, and Staff/Support may have final authority of a player's eligibility! The previous FFA championship appeared to have positive feedback; however, the upcoming championship is subject to some possible changes and minor modifications. Discussion feedback may be taken into consideration but is not guaranteed. Staff and Variants Admins may be referees.
Some additional rules to be more clear:

Etiquette Rules
1a.- Please do not resign at the start of the game because of your color or who you think your opposite is.

1b.- (Prelims + Finals) You are encouraged to abort the game if you see an incorrect ruleset, and you will not be penalized.

2.- Do not stall. Waiting 5 minutes before flagging or claiming win benefits nobody and does not make you look cool either.

5b.- Do not refresh your page multiple times to make the messages “[player color] disconnected” and “[player color] reconnected” spam the chat.

6.- You are allowed to spam arrows and use them appropriately as you please to help you play, but please do not spell out inappropriate words or symbols using arrows.

7.- (Prelims + Finals) Please state in chat if you will need a break (up to 5 minutes max ideally) in-between Game 1 and Game 2 in a round. Do not keep everyone waiting or go offline.

8.- Please do not enable blindfold to taunt your opponents or to reveal your identity.

9.- Do not prearrange/match-fix. Report any prearranged teaming/match-fixing. Upon becoming aware that a player communicates that he is planning to throw to make you win, please report this behavior to the tournament director immediately.

Twitch Rules
1a.- Streamer Rule - During a game, change your chat type to emote-only, or instruct your chat moderators to delete any messages that suggest moves.

1b.- Enabling a stream delay to counter stream sniping for the duration of the games would be encouraged.

2.- Streamer / Player Rule - During a game, please do not join calls or talk in direct messages with anybody discussing moves. This is blatant cheating, frowned upon, and will lead to your disqualification from the W4PCC. Even if you are muted or have others on the call muted/are not discussing your game. Do not interact with any 3rd parties during your game.

3.- Viewer Rule - In the case that a player streaming W4PCC does not have their chat restricted to emote-only, do NOT under any circumstance suggest moves. In other words, don’t kibitz.

4.- Player / Viewer Rule - Do not attempt to gain an advantage by viewing a player’s stream during your game. In other words, don’t stream snipe.

Other rules:
If you are qualified via the top two of the arenas or were notified of qualification via leaderboard selection or alternative selection, you must refrain from playing other Qualifier Arenas for this Championship. Failure to do so may result in forfeiture of qualification for the arena previously selected from. As a standard, the 1st offense is a disqualification from arena qualified in 2nd offense is a disqualification from the 2025 FFA W4PCC itself.
Failure to read and adhere to any applicable rules may result in disciplinary action, up to and including disqualification, and violation of core policies (Fair Play, Community Guidelines, etc.) during this tournament may result in account closure. In addition, accounts must have been created 28 days before the start of this tournament (February 19, 2025, or earlier). Furthermore, play-bans, sitewide mutes, and account closures may result in disqualification if in effect during the time of play; chat-bans may be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and may not be removed for the convenience of communicating during the matches.

Preliminaries and Finals are planned to be broadcasted on https://www.twitch.tv/fourplayerchess . We look forward to seeing you play in the championship! Best of luck to all players trying out

I'm not the biggest FFA or W4PCC nerd, but here are my general takes:

Q1: Would participants prefer 1/7 or a different time control? If so, what?

I've always believed that 1|15D is the best time control for FFA games. It allows players to think for at least 15 seconds per move without losing time and prevents quick drops to <10 second time scrambles, while at the same time limits the actual game time from extending hours since players can never have more than the base time.

Q2: Would you prefer “First to two wins/1.25” (current format) or “First to three wins/2.25” for the quarterfinals and semi-finals?

Definitely the former option, as these divisions are not nearly as grandiose or important as the final match. It would probably be too time consuming if played over many days and/or fatiguing for the players to have to play so many games in one sitting.

Q3: Suggestions on how to make 4pc championships accessible to a wider audience?

Somehow get CC staff to acknowledge our existence, increase the prize pool, get more people streaming/commentating, etc. These are of course all hard asks, but I don't know how else to popularize it.

Q4: Opinions on the championship containing 12 LB players + 16 Arena Qualified players? 

I think it should either be 8 LB and 8 qualifiers or 8 and 24. I don't know how 12 + 16 works out but if it works it works. Picking too many from the LB values rating more than it values skill, and I believe there are some players that don't deserve their spots in the championship as much as others. Not going to name anyone, but iykyk. Perhaps we would benefit from a smaller Round of 16, to close the gap and restrict eligibility to the truly best of the best, or we could also do a Round of 32 to get more qualified individuals and more variety.

Q5: What should happen if a player loses because they disconnected?

It has always been my opinion that such losses are unfair, especially because these games go on for so long. It would be very simple for games to simply restart at the position where the player disconnected. At most it would be a 1-5 minute delay in gameplay but it doesn't suddenly alter the dynamics of the game and it continues to give all players a fair chance to play for a win.

The only major problem I see is that the time usage won't be accurately reflected. That is, in such a situation, each player will restart the game with the same amount of time left, instead of the amount of time they had on their clock when the player disconnected. AFAIK there is no way to assign each player a separate amount of time on their clock but it might be possible with some kind of FEN4/PGN4 magic.

Proposal 1: 

If this is the current tiebreak system, I'm not so sure why your proposals aren't in place already. Again, I'm not well informed on the logistics of W4PCC—I'm mainly there for the entertainment—but it feels as if overall performance should be considered over performance in a single game. Tiebreaks based on total points scored seems kind of unfair because it's not exactly something that players can control, and they are especially not going to expect to lose because they earned 30 points one game while the other got 80. The optimal tiebreak should be based more on placement within games rather than points, since there is a difference between one player getting 2nd and the other 3rd vs one player having, for example, 230 total points and the other only 100. So in that sense I would agree with tiebreak suggestion BB.

Proposal 2:

In all honesty, I get that Luke is solo directing this entire event and has been for years, and that it is a championship after all so people should respect the rules, but I feel as if some of his decisions have been a bit too strict. I agree with this proposal and that we should be more lenient toward players if they were truly unaware of rules, especially since there are so many and it is human nature to skim over them rather than fully immersing oneself into them. About the lock out system, I believe we have a white/blacklist system for both players and clubs, but upon testing it earlier for the Teams W4PCC we found that there were some annoying bugs so it is not yet possible. But yes, a system that forcefully prevents accidentally breaking the rules would be nice. Hopefully it gets fixed soon.

Proposal 3:

This is the one place where I'm not sure what to say. I've been a victim of this myself, when my teammate's computer crashed during one of our matches and he couldn't play despite showing up literal seconds after the 15 minute grace period. But I also feel like simply finding a replacement is unfair because then an otherwise unqualified player gets an unfair chance to participate and change the outcome of the match because of their lower/higher strength than the person they replaced. Maybe a better way to handle this is to give a -1 penalty to the player(s), so while the game isn't canceled or altered, the player(s) have to win an extra game to make up for their absence. I would apply the same rule for Teams, partially because of what happened in my situation, where I had to quickly find a replacement for my partner so as to not instantly forfeit the match.

They delayed thing is always glitched and never comes up tbh

1) 1 | 5 looks great to me. The only time control you should consider changing is a time control for the finals, maybe to 1 | 7

2) current format

3) streams, events, membership giveaway. There could be a stream schedule like today we grind FFA rapid, next stream playing teams with viewers and the next one hyperbullet, in order fulfill the "any rating range can join" if your rating is too high FFA rapid or teams could be played casual in order not to lose the rating points. Obviously I forgot to mention the self-partner

4) seems fine

5) there could be a rule added the game doesn't count, wait 15mins if the player returns, the game continues from the current position when DC happened players are invited into a casual game. If the player is still not connected to the server, the game doesn't count and therefore a sub is required. It's up to the players if they want to continue playing or make the points of all 3 players equal and just to shuffle their kings in order to make a quick 3-fold and start over. 2 players resigning and then they get a rating refund is also an option or the two players with less points could resign or sth

It is suitable for hearing

Disconnects are just an unfortunate and unavoidable reality. You cannot continue the position from the point because knowing who the players are in a championship format is fundamentally game changing is unfair to whoever is leading. Voiding the game and having a new one creates a whole host of issues of players "disconnecting" in worse positions to restart.

I don't really have strong opinions on the rest, granted I'd like old standard, 1|15D, and the check system for qualifiers instead of points but the disconnection issue is not something you can work around or is worth trying to work around.

Q1: Would participants prefer 1/7 or a different time control? If so, what?
1/7 is decent,for me I'll go again with it, but if i have to choose another I wouldn't make such a big change, what I personally needed in the finals was a little bit more of base time, like 2/7 or 3/5 should be ok as well. The 4p stage is where you need to make the best possible moves. We were all constantly in time trouble, but is also part of the game.
For other events like the ffa festival 8/1 or 8/2 I don't remember was really succesfull. 8/0 is good but for a rapid world championship, you want all the players to be in equal conditions, it shouldn't be decided on who is fastest or has the better connection.

The most critical question is 1/15D or 1/7?
I consider 1/7 better, this is why
1.In game 5 prathu flagged with 1:38 on the clock, that's a lot of time to comeback if he had a phone.I saved games multiple times thanks to it. If it was 1/15D, let's say he wasted 30 seconds already, he would have 45 seconds to comeback, and you don't realize instantly when you get disconnected.That's something to take note and try to improve in the server, I guess. This can even be worse in a latest stage of the game, since the disconnection will decide the game almost instantly.
2.Delay circle might be bugged sometimes.
3.There are a lot of positions when you will need more than 15 seconds to make a move, and you have more flexibility on where do you wan't to use your time. I remember jbolea in 2022 with the point lead just shuffling and gaining time, easy positions don't require 15 seconds of delay.

Q2: Would you prefer “First to two wins/1.25” (current format) or “First to three wins/2.25” for the quarterfinals and semi-finals?
Check out the names of the world champions
JonasRath, Icystun x3, Grathieben, Carlosgabriel and myself.
All great players have won with this system.
2.25 for semifinals is wayyyyy to much
look at jbolea in semifinals with first to 1.25
2021 defeats Sakthi, GM Illingworth and me (for some reason I can't find the games, archive broken?)
2022 against Darksquareman, neoserbian and the tournament director itself Luke. That was funny af
2023 went through icy and eye in semifinals which I completely forgot about
2025 vs Eye, Radon and Luciano in only 2 games.
4 finals! that's insane
If you are good you will simply qualify for the finals at some point.

Q4: Opinions on the championship containing 12 LB players + 16 Arena Qualified players? 
The best players should be in, and every finalist this year qualified from leaderboard.
I would put Radon as an example, absolutely deserved to be in the semifinals, but playing a few games in a year and being enough is a bit of a meme. I agree with neo on this, there should be a minimum of games played to be eligible for a world championship, for example 15 or 20 games in the last 3 months shouldn't be a big deal for anybody since you can choose to play 8/0 as well.

Q5: What should happen if a player loses because they disconnected?
Unfortunately there is not a good answer in ffa. I got lucky, can't really complain

ah yes i forgot about this part

To me there are two obvious homerun improvemnets that have no drawbacks whatsoever.

1. Give the players the ability to agree upon a time to play the final instead of mandating a specific time in the distant future

2. Sub in people who actually played in the event instead of picking people off the leaderboard. Luke believes that only people who played in a certain part of a bracket may substitute for someone who played in the same part. Not letting icy sub in but taking a random off the leaderboard is just absurd. Think about it, icy would have been better off not playing in the qualifiers or the quarterfinals at all, but because he played, he is not eligible. That is nothing short of ridiculous. This exact insanity also took place in 2022 in that semi rojitto is referring to when Jerry could have played instead of Luke.

Obviously thank you Luke for organizing but just why?

Obviously Shinto is a good player no offense to him at all -- he played very well.

Also 10 min with a 5 sec delay might be the ticket

Guys you realize if you play 2 games of normal chess you are doing the same thing as one game of 4 player chess, you be productive this way!

Thanks for the completely unproductive comment

A few thoughts:

1) Time control - I'm not an FFA player, so I speak only as a viewer. Long games are incredibly boring to watch, both in regular chess and in 4pc. Regular chess is actually easier to watch because there is always an objective evaluation and a best move/plan. Analyzing an FFA game in real-time can be quite dull because there are no objective best lines...there is simply cautious guesswork. The complexity of 4pc already turns so many chess players away from watching these tournaments. Combining the complexity with longer time controls is a death sentence for viewership aspirations. 2|10D is probably a good compromise, but I think a delay (rather than increment) is necessary. In regular chess, the games are the most exciting when there is a little bit of time-pressure/time management involved.

2) Leaderboard qualifications - I skimmed through the posts here, and it seems like most people agree that implementing a minimum number of games via the leaderboard qualification route would be the best policy.

3) Disconnections - As Radon explained, the "disconnection issue is not something you can work around or is worth trying to work around."

4) Strict enforcement of the rules - I actually believe that the rules should be strictly enforced, to the maximum extent. If you're playing for a world championship title, you need to read the rules. They're really not that complicated, not even a little. It takes maybe ~10 minutes. When you allow certain players to be exempt from certain rules, there's too much room for admin abuse. If you disagree with the rules, you should be allowed to challenge the rules. However, once the rules are set, there should be no exceptions -- even for top players.

4a) Enforcement of the 15-min late policy - You also need to be respectful of other players' time. Showing up seconds after the 15-minute late policy still wastes everyone's time. If you've known for weeks that you must play at a certain time, there's no excuse for excessive tardiness.

5) Prize Money - For FFA, I'd prefer to maintain the winner-take-all payment distribution. I don't want there to be any incentive for people to place 2nd. Some people may argue that in the world championships, no one would settle for 2nd, but you never know. At the very least, I think 2nd, 3rd, and 4th should receive the same amount of money, and 1st should win significantly more.

My thoughts:

TC: Don't have a specific opinion, as there are good arguments for both sides. While I am partial toward keeping it at 1/7 or 2/7, I was hoping to find a tc that makes it less likely for someone to time out while thinking. Seeing as we can't put a delay at the end of games, I don't think that is possible without slowing games down (which would be better for move quality but probably worse for spectating/interest as others have said) 2+10D might work ok

# & type of players: I Felt as though the system worked well, and I wouldn't change it (though adding a baseline amount of games for the leaderboard is a good idea).

Tiebreak: I very much hope Luke will consider alternate tiebreak suggestions, as I do think they do a better job of representing a player's results than a simple last-game tiebreaker

15 Minutes Late: no opinion really; reason I included is because I felt that the current rules were vague (or could be complained about by players) in specific circumstances and so something slightly more specific could be better

Rules Enforcement: I have discussed this before, but it quite simply doesn't make sense to me for someone to be DQ because a. they didn't read something b. over something that doesn't matter a ton. If someone does read it and continues to disobey the rules, then it makes sense for them to be dqed. But DQing someone for not reading the rules in this specific instance does not really help anything.

Substitution: The quarterfinal & final substitution rules make sense to me, I think. For the semi-final, I think it should be the second-best of the quarterfinal bracket that feeds into the semi-finals. That makes much more sense as opposed to picking someone by rating or picking a player from a different quarterfinal.

I think 10 min 5D kind of deals with the disconnection problem -- the debate would be how much delay is needed, and I think somewhere between 5 and 8

Another reason is that right now in 4pc there is never an opportunity for a long think in a difficult position, and having a semi large time bank allows there to be more of a balance between intuition and calculation

I don’t have a complete and comprehensive response to everyone yet, but regarding disconnects, in FFA restarting from current is a NO. Fairly obvious now that it’s because identities are revealed. Server issue causes it, then we may have to delete that game and start over. Regarding large time bank there’s a risk of a rage quitter delaying the game and only being punished by being removed from the tournament when he already intends to rage quit and leave the tournament! So yes a balance we need if we are in fact going to change the TC.

i want 1/7 instead of 4/0 because if we disconnect because of power or wifi issues we will automatically lose and lose that round

considering the connection problems 1/10 seems good. in the world championship finals they were all in a time crunch and Jbolea ran out of time, Rojito won, time shouldn't determine the championship (of course Rojito deserved it) what I mean is games lost by seconds decrease quality...