Does it help against a cheater using 2 accounts? Does it help against 2 pre-teamed players? Does it help against early resigners (those who resigns on 5th move or later, but too early)?
I guess it is "no" to all 3 questions. And those who resign early will lose even less rating points than they lose now.
Looks like those who cannot become the 1st in a particular game will just resign and start a new one.
1-Cheater using 2 accounts: it doesnt help but it doesn't not help either.
2- Yes, it helps again pre-teaming: because one of the player would inevitably lose points, whereas in the way ratings are calculated now, both teaming players get an advantage from teaming.
3- People might resign earlier when they have no chance to play for win. That does happen in RISK. But then, the remaining players will have a great incentive to ally against whoever has the more points or a stronger position in order to have a chance to win. whereas with the way ratings are claculated now: often, one of the weaker 2 players has an incentive to self-destruct on the other weak player in order to secure second place, handing the win to the player who is already strongest.
i like the idea. bill doens't claim it will help against cheating, so i think the consideration is if it will likely make things worse. "those who cannot become the 1st in a particular game will just resign" might be a concern, but i'm not sure, because the amount of rating you lose will still depend on who wins. Currently, players tend to team up on the highest rated player. With this system, they'd want the highest rated to win (if they can't win themselves). Could be interesting.
what i don't get:
game A: an 1800 wins against 2 1400s and one 1300.
game B: an 1800 wins against 2 1800s and one 1300.
say the 1300 came 4th in both games. does he lose the same amount of rating in both games? That would seem wrong/unfair
We should not change something just to make some change. The change should solve some issue(s) or/and add something useful/positive/attractive.
Before this summer the Leaderboard was incorrect: there were lots of cheaters and the ratings were inflated. Also in FFA games the amount of rating points earned for a win was low. We fixed all these issues: There are no cheaters in Top 20. Rating distribution is now normal. Players get more points for a win in FFA.
The only "issue" which still exists is: Top 3 players in Teams lose 40-50 points when they lose against 1500 opponents, but earn 1 point (or even less) for a win. But this is normal for a game of 2300..2900 vs 1500. It can be fixed only artificially (by fixing maximal lost at 20, 30 or whatever) or naturally by increasing the players pool. When GMs and IMs will play against GMs and IMs this "issue" will be fixed naturally.
If some issue exists, please describe it and then propose a solution. Also please tell who is affected by this issue. If only 20 Top Players are affected by an issue, the solution must not negatively affect 15'000 of other players.
Changing the system where only 1st place gets an increase in rating will dramatically lower pre-arranged and early teaming. There will no longer be any "playing for second place" players that exist right now as that incentive will be eliminated. I support a shift to a winner takes all format, it's the only alternative I've seen to the rampant accusations of teaming that accompany most games these days. It won't stop some of the glitches in the system (two person accounts, etc.) but I'm not sure the current system does any better to address some of the current grievances.
I do think this should be taken into consideration, even if with some adjustment maybe.
I had suggested a similar thing in the early days of the game.
It is obvious as well that there will hardly be a completely fair system, given the nature of the game. I think Bab's answer is a bit aggressive, in particular the "I guess it is "no" to all 3 questions". But anyway if a similar system had to be implemented there should be a "resignation penality" so that a resigning player would lose extra x points. However I think people should hardly resign in FFA since everybody has chances until the very end usually.
*The developer of this game does not make the rules. If a concencous for a rule change is reached, he will implement it. he will however express his own personal opinion, as a player 
> I think Bab's answer is a bit aggressive, in particular the "I guess it is "no" to all 3 questions".
Really don't know why do you think so.
By the way, I still think it is "no" to all 3 questions.
1. As the topic starter confirmed, it is "no" for the 1st question.
2. We have 2 cases:
a) If 2 players pre-team and one of them uses his secondary (disposable) account, it is the same as 1.
b) If they both use their main accounts then they can just help one another in alternate way: A and B pre-team. In game 1 A earns 51, B loses 17. In game 2 B earns 51, A loses 17. As a result, A earned 34 and B also 34 in 2 games. Profit.
And it is very important that in the proposed system it does not matter if B will finish 4th or 3rd. He just needs to help A to become the 1st. He loses the same 17 points for the 2nd, 3rd or 4th place. As a result, we will see B's self-destruction, and B can also just "feed" A with his pieces.
So, the 2nd answer is also "no".
3. For the same reason as in 2 b) it is "no", because 17 points for any place from 2nd to 4th make people resign earlier.
@babyagun
You make points about pre-arranged teaming when that is not what I am trying to adress.
In all the posts I ever propose, I have a single objective: to reduce variance. I want the rules to make it so the better players tend to win their games as often as possible. I want to reduce luck.
The number 1 reason for variance in FFA is the overdependency on the opposite
What causes this overdependency?
1: The fact that collaborating with your opposite is the only way to prevent early queening without sacrificing your safety , hence I propose 9th rank promotions.
2: The fact that due to the way ratings are calculated, it is profitable to finish in second place. Hence, a player can shamelessy team up with his opposite since he figures that the worst that can happen is that he will finish in second place, and that is good enough. It is wise to do so.
I am not trying to resolves the issues of pre-arranged teaming and double-accounts. These issues are already pretty much resolved as far as I know.
What I am trying to do is find an optimal set of rules in order to make the game of 4 player chess as skill-based as humanly possible.
There will always be an element of luck in FFA, that is ok, it is what differentiates it from normal chess. But if we can go from a 50% luck 50% skill game to a 65% skill 35% luck game by tweaking a few rules, I think we have improved it.
Look at poker, why do people overwhlemingly play texas holdem ? It is the variant where the best players have the bigger edge. No one plays 5 card draw anymore, omaha is pretty popular, but never like holdem.
Let me repeat what @_-__-__-___- said:
*The developer of this game does not make the rules. If a concencous for a rule change is reached, he will implement it. he will however express his own personal opinion, as a player
If this idea will become popular here in the club, we can implement it. Also right now you can encourage @_-__-__-___- to add this new rating system to our test server as an option. It is not a time consuming task, so he can add it quickly.
When I write about drawbacks of this idea I do not "put a veto" on it. I describe my opinion. And my opinion is that we should try to fix issues in batches, when it is possible, not 1 by 1. And we must look at the whole picture at once, not at some particular piece of it.
Now we have a casual game with 2 winners. If we will change it to "the winner takes it all" it will change the gameplay for all players. With a little exaggeration it will be like "rats or spiders in a jar". Do we want it? If the community wants to change it this way, it will be changed.
> 1: The fact that collaborating with your opposite is the only way to prevent early queening
> without sacrificing your safety , hence I propose 9th rank promotions.
Yes, it sounds reasonable and I already offered to test it on our test server where @_-__-__-___- added it to Custom Games. Without testing it will stay an idea. One of the dozens ideas we have.
@ babyagun
Yes, you are right about the testing.
I have tried the 9th rank promotion. The games tend to develop a lot slower. it becomes hopeless to get a quickie queen. You still need to collaborate with your opposite, but its a lot harder.
As for the way ratings are calculated, I think I know what it would do because in some games, sometime, all the players were playing to win. I think the feel of the games would be similar.
I will try to set up some test games
bill, you can create rated custom games on the test server. also, anyone can create custom games now on the test server, not just premiums, but you need to opt into beta.
i'll can change the actual rating calcs on the test server, but it's not clear to me how they are done? please answer my q in #4 above
@stoppromotion
I like your 'block opposite' idea in theory. In practice, some players might get blocked by everybody and would be unable to play games lol.
I believe a combination of 'block' and 'opposite block' would work wonders!
I don't like to play anonymously idea, I don't think it would work well in practice. Besides, you dont need to play anonymously if you can block the players that hold grudes over long periods of time.
Also, I dont like the 'higher rated players never being opposite' idea. That is just giving an edge to lower rated players, and I see no reason why we should do that. It would be nice if it was possible for the best players to achieve much higher ratings than players whos level of play is much weaker. As it is now, you get 1650s who are very strong players in a bad run, and 1650s who are relatively weak players on a good run. These players end up in the same games and it is a source of frustration for both the weak and the strong ones. I think the winner takes all approach to ratings would adress the issue you are trying to adress with that point, ie, less 'teaming' from opposites
I don't like the proposal for "one winner three losers" very much. I am afraid that it will lead to the same problems as the "last man standing wins" proposal. The adventurous/reckless style of play will be severally handicapped, since it rarely leads to the first place, and on the contrary the cautious/over-defensive style of play will be promoted as the optimal strategy. Another drawback is that a win will become very difficult for a lower rated player matched against three higher rated opponents, not only because of the challenge of beating three stronger opponents at once, but also because all his opponents will be highly incentivized to prevent him from winning (since their rating will suffer the most in this case). This could motivate the lower rated players to use more aggressively their rating-range setting, to avoid matchings with higher rated opponents, reducing the pool of available opponents for the higher rated players, increasing the waiting times as a result.
@_-__-__-___- 's phrase "you need to opt into beta" means:
You need to join this club: https://www.chess.com/club/chess-com-beta
FFA chess shares a lot with the game of RISK.
On Gambit.com, RISK ratings are calculated this wau. Only the winner wins ratings, all other players lose rating. The winner wins the rating for all his 'individual matches'. The losers would lose rating relative to the winner
For example: let's say we have a game with player
A= 1700
B= 1600
C=1500
D= 1400
Let's say B wins: So B would win +13 for beating A, + 7 for beating C and + 3 for beating D, hence his rating would go up 23 points
player A( 1700) would lose his match against player B ( 1600) so he would lose 13 points
PLayer C (1500) would lose his match against player B( 1600) and lose 7 points
Player D ( 1400) would lose vs the 1600 and lose 3 points.
Another example: All 3 players have the same rating, the winner wins 30 points, the others lose 10 points.
Another example : A1400 wins vs B C and D who are 1600 A wins 51 points, all 3 others lose 17
I think this would be a better way to calculate FFA ratings. Because since only finishing 1st would matter, everyone would be trying to win. Hence, we should see a lot less self-destruction to secure second or thrid place, alliances would have to switch more often, with people allying against whoever is threatening to pull away with the win.