about 7:
I wrote a report about 2 months ago, which I shared with bosses and a few admins. I'm sharing this to prove that I myself, have been addressing the issue of Teaming in FFA.
here are my toughts:
...We’re also discussing changes to the rating system for the high rated players, eg how many “wins” and “losses” one gets for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, eg how much rating is won or lost. This is a hot a delicate topic. One requirement really is that 2nd=3rd, because otherwise, Free for All ends up being near 100% like teams, with opposites teaming till the end, both happy to gain rating.
High level FFA will always be played as teams 4 way, because it’s just the best strategy, the disadvantage of being the middle- man 3way is just too large.
We’ve had a ‘morhping’ system in place for almost 2 years now, where the wins and losses change, as the average rating of a game goes up. We morph from the standard, good old “+3 +1 -1 -3” to so called “Solo”, or “winner takes all” at higher levels: “3 -1 -1 -1”. This ensure 3way stage is interesting, as you have to play for the win. That said, it’s also a very difficult game, and more often than not someone ends up ‘blundering’ the game for someone to win, and the other player gets upset because he loses rating due to a mistake of the other player.
“morphed wins/losses depending on average rating”
31-1-3=> 3 -1-1-1
The values are printed to the chat of each game.
There really is no way out of this dilemma. And frankly, the Free-for-All that you (and Dallin and John) knew back in the day just doesn’t exist anymore, or rather, it only exists at lower levels, <2000. All 2300+ players know they need to play teams in the 4 way stage.
Uprising players all run into the same problem when facing good players, they scream “cheating teamers” and “there’s a teams mode for those who want to play teams”. And they think we should just ban the teamers (even Dallin wanted this, when first confronted with the problem, 3 or more years ago). But it’s entirely impossible and wrong, teaming is simply the best strategy, you cannot forbid players to make good moves! Not to mention drawing the line between teaming moves, blunders, etc is not objectively possible.
This is by far the most discussed topic of all time in 4pc history, we have almost 4 years of forum topics, and it doesn’t go away, as uprising players run into the ‘teaming’ reality of FFA.
This leads me to some radical ideas, because there may be a solution, one suggested by longtime admin and top player @hest1805, who shaped the game we call Chaturaji: a mini version of 4pc, on 8x8, with the rules “capture the king” (eg
there’s not checkmate, any move is legal, a player dies when his king is actually captured), and the “3 point checkmate” rule, eg capturing the king gives 3 points only, not 20. So a bishop or rook are worth more than a king.
Chaturaji is very popular, and many 2player and 4player variant lovers play it regularly. In this game, there’s no real point in teaming, because you just try to get as many points (eat as many pieces) as possible, and don’t want anyone else, not even your opposite, to make points. And the +3 +1 -1 -3 wins/ losses for 1st-4th works great at all levels.
So this game actually fits our description of
“4 Player Chess - Capture pieces and checkamte opponents to earn points and win”
much better than Free-for-All, which would more accurately be described as “play teams until 1st player out, and then endure a very difficult battle of “keeping the balance” (keep teaming against the player who’s ahead on material/points)”. Until somehow somebody wins (usually cause someone blundered, or got impatient, or upset, and “played for 2nd” place, thus “ruining the game”.
So the idea is to have “4 Player Chess” (not teams) be “maxi- chaturaji”, eg chaturaji on a big 4p board with standard setup. eg FFA with capture the king and 3-point checkmate rule. This game hasn’t been tested much, maybe 10 point checkmate could work too.
And of course this is a radical idea, and players will revolt, but I think longterm it might actually be the better version of 4 player chess, hopefully equally fun, although quite different, from modern FFA. A 4 player game where you do indeed play for yourself only, just like in the old days, and the low levels today, where teaming is considered cheating, for lack of better knowledge.
I’ll share this idea with more people in the time to come, just wondering first what you think.
I could envision us listing 3 games for a while:
-4 Player Chess (aka maxi-chaturaji)
-4 Player Teams
-Free-for-All
https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/a-new-setup-proposal-byg-switch?quote_id=70905389&page=5#comment-70905389
1. there are many topics and posts on this. Some of mine are:
https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/a-new-setup-proposal-byg-switch?page=3#comment-70838751
https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/a-new-setup-proposal-byg-switch?page=4#comment-70848187
PLEASE discuss the setup in other topics. I'd like this one to be for other issues
2. Most players have more time on their clocks nowadays. This is because most players move rather quickly (even with 15s delay). Half way through a game, many players have 1-2 minutes on their clocks. It used to be that most were much closer to 0. If you make your move withing seconds, you time is not affected, that is, it is, you get time added to your clock. And it's 7 seconds, not one.
3. There is a time warning sound, when your clock passes the 10 seconds mark.
4. We are working on it. One idea is to separate 4PC and variants, aka 4p and 2p games. Not final, but you can have a look at https://www.chess.com/variants-test for what I have in mind. You can turn 2p and 4p on or off at the top. This way you get only 2p or 4p in the lobby and watch tabs. Also there is only one lobby, no more one lobby for each game. When a game is selected, there's an additional filter for that game in lobby or watch, to filter for only that game (if it's a most popular game), or only that category (if the selected game was in some other category). Feedback and thoughts are most welcome.
5. Please explain, I don't know what you are referring to. Unless you're talking about this glitch https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/upcoming-changes?page=22#comment-70926213
My reply is here: https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/upcoming-changes?page=23#comment-70930601
6. we could change it to 30s. Fwiw it always was 45 seconds (i think? in 1|15D it would abort when 30 seconds left, i think? so 15s delay +30 on clock)
7. Teaming in FFA is the most discussed topic of all time, and sadly no satisfying solutions was found. What great suggestions are you referring to? Please to share. Fwiw the only thing that somewhat helped is Solo/Winner takes all, which has achieved that at least the teaming stops in the 3 way stage. The only promising solution I can think of (and this idea comes mainly from @hest1805), is to reduce the king value to 10, 5, or even 3 points. And maybe add capture the king. Promotion on 10th or 11th rank would likely also help. This turns the game into something of a 'maxi Chaturaji'. Points are all that matter, and you don't want anyone, not even your opposite, to get a lot of points. I have suggested this recently, and plan to do more promoting of this idea in the future when I have some time. Fwiw I get accused of wanting to kill FFA and well generally the higher rated players who are used to teaming (and had to learn it!) absolutely despise this idea. And the majority of players will probably also revolt, as nobody likes changes.