Unknown Rules in 4 Player Chess and Variants

With the latest updates to the game and its ever-changing aspects, many people are still confused about why they won or lost a game. So here are a few "unknown" rules that will hopefully help you in your future games.

1. King Captures

In the following position...

...red can move his king out of the way of yellow's queen to deliver a discovered check to green's king. Once red moves, yellow gains the ability to capture green's king, since yellow moves before green. This sounds confusing, as usually, the game ends in checkmate, but in some cases, one player will have the opportunity to capture the enemy's king. I'm talking about teams here, not FFA, for which the rules still apply but are a little easier to understand. In teams, even if your king is under attack, like seen below...

you can capture an enemy player's king:

2. How Points are Split

1. Zombies Kings (and royal pieces in general)
   Whenever there are zombie kings on the board, you can still receive points for checkmating them. This is the reason why you can't "claim the win" in such situations, even when it looks like you can. For example, in this position,
   
   red can claim the win, since he has 20 more points than yellow. However, in the situation below,
   
   red can't claim the win, since yellow could theoretically checkmate green and gain 20 points for it. However, if red had 41 points instead of 21, they could claim the win since they'd have 20 more points than yellow even if yellow checkmated green.
2. Stalemates, Insufficient Material, Threefold-repetition, and the 50-move-rule
   In a situation where a player is stalemated, the division of points depends on whether or not that player was in the game when they were stalemated. If the player was playing when they got stalemated, they would receive the same number of points as they would receive if they checkmated someone (i.e., 20 points in most games). If they were not playing, however, because they resigned or timed out, they would not receive any points, but rather, the other players would split the points evenly.
   When it comes to insufficient material, there is only one valid case, and that is when there are only two players remaining, no zombie kings, and neither player has sufficient checkmating material, in which case both players receive half of the points for checkmate (i.e. 10 points in most games). In other cases, rules for claiming the win still apply. There is also the case where one player has enough checkmating material and the other doesn't. If the player with sufficient material has at least 1 more point than the player with insufficient material, the former can claim the win. However, if the player with insufficient material wants to claim the win, they need to have at least 21 more points than the player with sufficient material.
3. Autoclaim and Autoresign
   Autoclaim only occurs in games where the 2nd place finisher gains rating (FFA). Autoresign only occurs in games where 2nd loses along with 3rd and 4th (Solo). Autoclaim is when the game forces the 1st place finisher to claim the win in order to protect the 2nd place finisher. Autoresign is when the game forces one player to resign because there is no way they could possibly win (in the 2 player stage), even if they captured all of the opponent's pieces AND checkmated them (i.e., they'd still end up 1 point short).

There are also certain situations which combine two or more of the situations I listed above, such as insufficient material and zombie kings. Those are a bit more complicated, so I won't post them for the time being, but you can always experiment with the analysis board if you'd like. Hope this helps!

Quick addition: you can execute a king capture not only while in check but also if you are in checkmate.

(In FFA you are obviously checkmated immediately, in Teams checkmate only happens when it is the turn of the attacked player.)

(On another hand, the king capture while in check works in FFA if say you are being checked by Player 2, and Player 3 makes a discovered check by using one of your pieces, in which case you can use king capture to get out of the check)

There are a lot of others rules unknown: 

- treefold repetition 

 If you get the same position tree times (necessarily in succession) the game is over

- 50 moves rule

 this rule is not unknown but someones dœsn't know it

So if there are not captures, checkmates or pawn push during 50 moves, the game is over

-Capture en passant

 I loove surprize my opponents with this unknown rule. 

Imagine if red push a pawn of 2 squares on the colon d, he was on the 2nd rank and go on the 4th

So, the pawn can be captured on d4 (4th rank of colon d) but also on d3, the square between the 4th rank and the 2nd. 

and

Dissapear!

But:

1. the capture en passant is possible only with pawns, no with other pieces

2. the capture en passant is possible only the first move after the pawn push

3. In this position, the capture en passant is not possible, the blue pawn can push but he will not capture the red pawn

when they say crazed "but where is past my pawn??" i tell them "capture en passant, hehehe!"

- Forfeit on time vs insuffisant material 

if there are a final with red and yellow (blue and green checkmated), and red has only on king, and yellow is winning but he forfeits on time, red will not get 20 points because he are in insuffisant material, he cannot checkmate yellow. 

In this case, red and yellow share the 20 points and who has more points win

What?

i wrote en passant

You can check. 

And how dœs you know that is the same in english than in french? 

Are you french? 

Also, you can't capture en passant unless you *could've captured the pawn had it moved 1 square instead of 2*... use this to remember all the en passant rules in existence, it should work! (Pawns used to only move one square, so this rule was added to preserve the capturing on the 3rd rank from before the rule.)

Does Chess.com have torpedo chess yet? Where you can move your pawns 3+ spaces. I think that's the one.

This en passant rule falls under the "could you have captured that pawn had it only moved 1 square" mnemonic, yay... okay time to stop posting here before it gets weird

Y’all are clogging up an extremely useful post…

https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/king-capture-explanation-wanted

not sure if this bug is fixed yet, but want to post this in case anyone else has this issue regarding king capture

Torpedo allows you to move your pawns 2 spaces on any move. 3+ would be op lol

also yeah I agree so admins could you remove unnecessary posts at the very least

en passant is so cool. About 95 % don't know it even exists. I can pull it off on players who are above 2000 sometimes.  

thats the one! i had someone challenge me to it in blitz once and almost lost to a random stranger lol