Strategies and Unique Observations

I love many aspects of this game that don't exist at all in regular chess:

- You cannot leave pieces exposed. If your queen is attacked or someone checks you, you will be attacked by others who take advantage of the fact that you must get out of check or protect your queen. 

- You can checkmate someone while your piece is protected by another player's piece. For example, I can check your king with my queen if my queen is defended from your king by someone else's piece (I'd be sacrificing my piece to get the mate)

- If two  or three players are attacking a square, a third player may potentially move his/her piece into that square safely because if one of the other two players were to attack the piece, his/her own piece would be in danger due to the other players attacking the square. 

What other situations or strategies have you observed which are unique to this game?

Nice observation, friend! I like them!

and be careful. Dont let three opponents attack you at the same time. You may die soon. I was in that situation before.

A piece of this player can be protected by other players. You may be attacked by red, green when you take yellow's piece.

Beware of being caught up in deep tactics. While you are busy building up a multi-move against an opponent another opponent is watching those tactics and realizing you may not be alert to their attack.

Thanks, Feeling-good!

I agree with you, dubbler. It's much harder to execute tactics as you never know what other players have planned. 

I have a couple more things that are unique to this game:

-Point value of pieces doesn't necessarily reflect their true value! Obviously, queens that are worth 1 point are worth more than a pawn. But they're also worth more than a knight worth 3 points and often a rook/bishop worth 5 points! Yes, in regular chess, you may sac a piece worth less if the subsequent positioning makes sense, but it's very different in 4-way-chess! Positioning aside, you may not even trade a pawn with a rook because of how much the pawn may be worth at the end of the game.

-Unlike regular chess, exchanges are almost never worth it when all 4 players are still alive. You may gain more (often negligible) points, but you weaken yourself compared to the other two players.

Regarding the third point of the first post, one thing that happened to me a lot and which is also unique to 4p is the following: I moved a piece to a square which is labelled 'safe' by Dragadiddle (for instance, capturing a pawn with a knight which is defended by two rooks of different colors).

I felt rather clever doing that, only to have the first of the two attacking rooks sneakily moving away, leaving my knight for grabs for the second rook...

Now I sometimes use this strategy too, if I think the player who can make the capture is not my biggest threat at that moment.