whoa
To betray too early means 3rd place in 95% of cases
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(Instead, one HELPS the opposite, SAVES him, takes RISKS, attracts fire on HIM in order to release pressure from the opposite - in so many cases I even sacrificed my 9p queen (!) because I knew that I had absolutely no chances afterwards if the opposite were killed by the 2 flanks, especially when I see who are the flank players 
, whereas doing that at least gives me 3rd place (and the difference with the 2nd is rather narrow now) and in addition usually the opposite is rather grateful afterwards).
I totally agree, and let me ask you this, as it happened to me so many times:
you save your opposite, sac your q and pieces, even mate 1 side, should your "grateful" opposite take advantage of the situation on the board or take the 1st opportunity to eliminate you? he will finish 1st, you 2nd or 3rd it doesn't matter, is it legal? yes, does it bring him the 1st place? yes, is this how you encourage players to play this game?
or should your opposite eliminate the other side, let you develop and recover meanwhile, so you 2 could fight for 1st...
I can bring so many examples of games that I played strong, saving my opposite who played bad, frequently a lower-rated player, sacing my dear q to save him from mate etc, the result on the board is that the opposite is stronger than me, he attacks me with the other side and finish 1st, and me? end the game with a bad feeling
Yes, it's tricky; and depends greatly on the level of the persons involved. But not to help in the beginning is clearly counterproductive whatever happens, and to weaken/attack/kill the opposite is just stupid.
In the case he's under attack and it's obvious that he will die whatever happens, yes to sack pieces is silly certainly. (In this case sometimes it's even worth to checkmate him if possible, yes; but only if he is SURE to die immediately). But in most cases it's worth. Sometimes he recovers completely afterwards. Sometimes it impresses people enough and they do mistakes afterwards. It's like in poker: it installs doubt about your real force, and some players feel nervous if you sacrifice your queen. I saw some games where the guy who ate my queen just 3-4 moves later was losing his own after a simple and obvious combination like a fork just because he was too confident, having a queen in excess. Etc.
And anyway I'm convinced that the mathematical expectancy is in favour of sacrificing, even a 9p queen. If the guy is anyway eliminated, you're unlikely to be 1st or 2nd even with this queen; whereas to arrange at least the 3rd place is usually feasible (and with today's FFA new rating calculations it's definitely Ok to be 3rd).
sry but i dont read big messages
more like i cant
Hey Indipendenza!
We have just played a 4-player-game! Thanks for your all insightful pieces of advice, hope to meet you again.
Another proof: https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess?g=4125520
Almost always the same. An idiot eats your queen (put there ON PURPOSE), having 9 pts but ruining HIS and your chances of being 1st or 2nd at the end of the story.
I would say, don't allow mate in one on the board even against your opposite when they are a decent player; it isn't a totally unreasonable strategy to mate an opposite to ensure you are getting 1st-3rd, if it's being offered on a platter (though in this case, it did also depend on blue taking away the flight square, and no pts. for opp.). Also, don't hang your queen to a 2000 opposite, especially when you are threatening their rook, they will just not know how to interpret that : )
How I think of opposite: they are a general in my army who is cut off from main communications (they are my army because their pieces are placed in such a way to work against the other 2 players, however they cannot attack me effectively in most cases); this general can't communicate so can't be given orders and is kind of crazy and may attack my own troops if they happen to be in the way, so tread carefully! The general may be more drunk sometimes than others and you never knew at the start of a game how many drinks he's had.
LOL GUSTAV
And another brilliant case. The guy in front weakens me, creates at least 3 missed mates (the side guys are so bad that they even don't see), and finished 3rd (and me, 4th of course). More precisely, ex-aequo 2nd/3rd with another guy, just because they were bad. In a normal situation, the winning guy would've claimed, that's all.
My point is that you can ONLY win in such cases if the other guys play badly.
https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess?g=4150366
Why I HATE such situations? Because once you realise what's on, you can do nothing. Very often you cannot even make it in order to get 3rd (unless you're lucky with a stalemate for example). So you FEEL that you are literally losing your time. And that's the feeling I hate, especially when you had to wait in queue in order to get a game.
And another idiot, victim of the same law. Finishes 3rd as so many. We had an easy win, red was near to death, etc. And he ruins everything, to make me 4th and him 3rd. Just to get 5 points. Silly.
https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess?g=4153223
Indipendenza, once again I would say you need to stop expecting a 2000 rated opposite to have the awareness that they should be attacking a side player. Looking at the game, I personally think your moves were quite poor, even aside from hanging your rook to blue. I think your moves #2, #4, and #7 are all quite bad.
on move 2, red played e4 (which in my opinion is a mistake), which you should be quite happy to see with a pawn on d4, because they have given up any possible e3 advance later on. if they ever play d3 you would have a super safe king and ideal pawn structure on your kingside; instead, you took e.p. and just gave up what was a great concession from red.
move 4 is just begging red to take on b5 after blue takes BxB and you basically depended on green to take en passant, the only active move he has in the position, and save you. otherwise you are losing at least a piece, or possibly even your queen depending on how it plays out. Instead c8 was a great move for you as neither red and yellow controls the dark square diagonal yet, and it would be good for you to take control of it. your move 4 was just positional suicide. You could have easily gotten mated there with a line like:
5. (red) Bxb5 RxB Qh13 3xg4 = Q 6. Bxc6+ Qb7 QxQ# if red just ignored green
move 7, if you really wanted to check red, you could have played Nd4 instead of Ne5 if you really wanted to check red, and you would have gotten basically the same check vs. red without any danger of getting backranked. there was absolutely no reason to have the knight on e5 instead of d4 in your attack. If green was stupid to checkmate you, you certainly did everything in your power to invite him to do it and create a poor position for yourself in the early moves.
Of course Gustav, most moves were bad. The point was elsewhere.
the point is you can't expect opposite to play logically if you are doing everything in your power to invite them to play illogically. even in higher level FFA games, people are happy to eliminate their opposites if they are playing badly
To give you an example:https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess?g=3983898-1
I mated my opposite since he wasn't contributing much and was able to win with tactical complications \ by points.
After having played 4p chess A LOT, I see that in FFA (contrary to Solo), it's strictly counterproductive to betray the opposite in the 1st stage (with all 4 neighbours still alive). In almost all cases it means the 3rd place afterwards.
Just an example:
https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess?g=2740028
(OF COURSE I saw this possibility beforehand, but I couldn't expect such imbecility from a guy with almost 2000 points of rating in FFA and 2630 games played!).
To weaken the opposite, to attack the opposite, even to kill the opposite is just STUPID. Ok, you get 20 points, but afterwards in most cases you are taken between 2 guys who will kill you eventually. And even when they don't, you are likely to finish maximum 2nd. I think I've only seen 10-15 games (out of several thousands) where you finish 1st after having done that.
The only (very marginal) exceptions when it could still be worth, it's when you still have 4 players; one of the flank players is almost dead, the other is rather passive and doesn't have a lot of points, let's say under 10, you have already let's say 35 points and the opposite is a strong (dangerous) player: so you eliminate the opposite, get to 55 points, kill the weakest flank player and thus with 75 points claim the win.
(And you will notice that I haven't even spoken here about the FUTURE consequences: players who do that usually are not assisted correctly by their opposites in later games, at least by those who have a good memory or take notes).