Discussion: What is allowed and not allowed

Another thing about labeling "they should have taken the Q instead of the N" cheating is sometimes people just make terrible moves or just don't see the same thing you see. Sometimes cheating is obvious but sometimes something looks like cheating but it's just a bad move/they didn't see whatever.

Agreed. I don't think there should be any rule what moves a player can/can not do in certain situations. I think the most strict way to play would be to hide all players names and ratings and disable chat for all players. But it is a casual game, so most people would not want that (me included).

Personally I'd prefer a rule like "no strategic discussion in ffa chat" meaning that you can't tell players of blunders and whatnot, so all players need to think of themselves.

I didn't insist that "you must take Q, not N". But if you don't take someone's Q and repeat the same (don't use your opportunity to take his R, Q, N) many times, then you highly likely in a team with that guy. Or you are a very bad player. It is a sign of preteaming and can be used by chess.com support staff to detect cheaters.

If we don't mention it in the rules, we should mention it somewhere else.

I think a list of signs people are teaming is only helpful for moderators finding cheaters and for cheaters to use to avoid detection. If people just play without prearranged teaming or trying to agree to team up in any way with chat, then I don't think there will be problems. It is true a lot of false accusations are made, but as long as you don't cheat you don't need to be worried.

It's a valid strategy 2 players aim to destroy a third player, just because they can? I promoted a pawn, but green would trade for a tower, but blue came in and check me so I can't got the tower, in the end I was checkmated in the 10th move

I don't think it's that simple. Reasons for not taking material or for helping other players are not always obvious. When I play FFA, I actually often help other players without gaining anything from it directly. I prefer to keep my opponents' material more or less balanced, so they can attack each other.

To give an example, there was a game where I could capture player A's queen for free with my knight. However, then player B would promote a pawn. Player A only had a queen and player B had no queen, but some other material. So, instead of capturing the queen, I moved my knight back and sacrificed it to prevent player B from queening. Player B immediately accused me of teaming, since I didn't play the (in his eyes) obvious move and take player A's queen for free, but instead chose to sacrifice my knight, taking his pawn. There was no immediate gain — I actually lost a piece and kept my opponent's queen on the board —, but in the end it was better for me in terms of the overall game balance.

In another game I did the opposite. I allowed the player across from me to queen to prevent the player on my left to take material from him. Again, I gained nothing directly from it and the player across from me gained a lot (saved a piece and queened), but I kept the game balance more in my favour by not allowing the (more dangerous) player on my left to weaken the (less dangerous) player across from me — which is his most dangerous opponent.

Such considerations are not always obvious.

Nice discussion. My brief thoughts.
1) It is OK if you don't capture an undefended piece of an opponent.
2) It is less OK if you do it multiple times during a game.
3) It is absolutely not OK if you never capture pieces of a specific opponent until the other two players are eliminated, in multiple games that you are matched together.
4) If you do so, the system should simply stop matching you two together.

Good point. That's why you can never know for sure if someone is cheating from an isolated move. It has to be a regular behavior througout a match, and even then it might be hard to spot.

Maybe a good way to condense some rules is:

1) Actively helping another player to finish in a better position (say, second instead of third) is illegal. This includes teaming.

2) Doing something that doesn't help you win the match is considered cheating, as long as this isn't a normal mistake. So attacking other player for a personal grudge, or gifting other player points in spite of yourself, isn't allowed.

* Another problem is what happens when you see that two other players are helping each other way too much. I just played a match when yellow apologized to red for accidentally checking him. When I asked them if they were allies they blocked the chat. 

Not teaming, in that condition is signing for fourth or third place, but I think this situation is covered by the points I made. Thoughts?

There are a lot of FFA games where (when 2 players left) one player begs to give him points at the end of the game. Also some players help stronger player, because they are going to ask for points at the end of the game. So, it is their "strategy".
It is a gray area now.

that is completely non-gray - asking/begging for the points is totally wrong. it should be stated in the rules in a direct way and punished harshly (chat bans).

in what way is begging one opponent to help you at a cost to the other opponents fair? here's an example - one guy asks an opponent to "move a certain way to help me" and that harmed/disadvantaged another opponent(s) (by definition if it helps one it harms some opponent but I'm not going to reword that - you get it I'm sure). this is clearly against the rules. the two things are essentially the same.

that said, in Bab's 2-players left points-begging scenario (pre-begging/no begging obviously) the leader can do whatever they want as long it is legal. they can claim/resign or give the remaining opponent any points they want (maybe not to the point of lowering their own placement in the game but that could be argued too since they can play "self-destructively" in the early part of the game - another discussion). 

I am in agreement with the suggestion that hiding names and ratings until the end of a FFA match would be a good policy,  somewhat more difficult to cheat and likely reduce the incidence of violations. Not knowing your opponents rating will also add another interesting element to the game strategy.

But hiding names and ratings does not prevent pre-teaming.

Obviously it does not 'prevent' it. But it makes it much more difficult and much easier to detect. Think of what you would have to do...
Von (Calls BabYagun on the phone): "Let's cheat at FFA."
Bab: How? Those idiot admins have blocked names and ratings.
Von: We will both log on at the same time, and since we are on the phone we will be able to tell if we are in the same game?
Bab: How? If we end up the same color, then we aren't, obviously. But if I get red and you get yellow... how will I know if you are my yellow or in some other game?
Von: Well, it will start at the same time...
Bab: Oh, ok, that might work. Are you ready....

Flyinghuman reports game to administrators...
Administrators look up games and see that Bab and Von not only signed on within seconds of each other and engaged in team like behavior. Not only that but they look back and see this happening again and again...

@VAOhlman, I could continue the conversation with Von, but my answer will be considered as a "Guide For 4PC Cheaters"  So, let's make them think themselves.

> Administrators look up games and see that Bab and Von not only signed on within seconds of each other and engaged in team like behavior. Not only that but they look back and see this happening again and again...

You are right. These are 2 signs of pre-teaming.

@Lt_Jilli suppose I checked Green, and then I wrote one of the following comments in the chat. Which of them should lead to sanctions against me and which should not?

1) Red attack Green, I am checking him!
2) I checked Green, he is vulnerable to attack!
3) Green is in check!
4) Take it Green!
5) Check!
6) Look what I did!
7) !!!

My opinion is that none of these are at all 'teaming'... they are all good play on your part, assuming that if Red were also to attack Green at this point the result would be good for you.

yeah, that is something I don't understand - why do we have to type "/stop-chat" when a simple button to kill it would be very easy to provide. 

all 7 of those chats should be illegal - what is the purpose of all of those? to bring attention to the situation so an ally/another opponent can take an action. so the purpose was to cheat - I don't know what to call that other than cheating.

@EyeKnows and @Lt_Jilli I think your preference would be to play without chat, or with chat without free text (only canned messages), if you had such a matchmaking option. And this is fine. I think many players would prefer to restrict the social interaction to what happens inside the board only. The current system actually favours greatly this preference, by giving everyone an easy way to kill the chat immediately after the game starts. And this leaves unfulfilled the (smaller?) group of players who enjoy having a richer social experience, by trying to influence the decisions of their opponents by playing with their minds. I hope that someday chess.com's 4 Player Chess infrastructure will have matured enough to accommodate for both preferences.

I must note however that, from what I understand, this topic is more about what is allowed INSIDE the board, than outside of it. :-)

1) Hi, Good Luck! ---> (((attack red)))
2) Hi, Good Luck!! ---> (((attack blue)))
3) Hi, Good Luck!!! ---> (((attack yellow)))
4) Hi, Good Luck!!!! ---> (((attack green)))
Instead of getting paranoid about what people write in the chat, wouldn't it be simpler to just disable it? Banning people for typing exclamation marks will hardly make the game more fun, or the variant more popular.