https://www.chess.com/4-player-chess

what are the strategies to this game?

I realize trading early on is really bad. If one side likes to irrationally trade, I just avoid any sort of contact with that side.
I'm also unsure if there is merit to an early queening.
Also it seems rational to castle to the right side.

It also seems implied by some players that the opposite side is ur ally.

Thoughts?

I'm just starting to get in to it. I get the sense that there are alot more similarities to poker in this version.

game theory applies alot more and theres also more luck involved. One pitfull I've run in to a couple of times is making plays based on the assumption that the players after me will make the best move, only to realise I screw myself over when they do something ******ed instead.

Just. Don't.

On the surface, it seems like trades would be infinitively worse than two player, and people would just sit on their starting positions, so oscillate your knight back and forth and you should win, because the game is an obvious draw. Trading between two players would be like giving material to the other two players. If you're not oscillating your knight, you're making a mistake, imho. Kind'a drunk though, but not terribly so.

Yes, sober now. I can't think of a beneficial trade that would arise in multi-player chess, because the person who waits to pick-up the pieces wins when the other armies engage each other. So wait to pick-up the pieces, and everyone should do this, and therefore there is no real game.

OIC you get points for capturing pieces. You should perhaps minimally mobilize your army, and stand ready. But to get points I'm guessing you want to have a bigger army than the person you're engaging, and being in position to attack second is beneficial. And, you'd take into account how many points a check mate it worth. If it's worth a lot of points, then there'd be more interaction between the armies.

If you just move your knights around you risk the other players racking up all the points and you finishing last even if you're the last man standing. plus queens are very easy to get. players re bound to just crush you with queens if you do nothing.

checkmate is worth 25 points and taking a resigned players king is worth 20, so often there is a race to the dead king when a player quits or times out. whilst I agree trades are almost always bad, I do think its important to mobilise your pieces so that you can take advantage of other players attacks.

game theory wise it makes alot of sense to go for the player who is being ganged up on, unless there is a near competitor on points that poses a threat to your final standing.

Also you can get 5 pints for a double check which normally occurs by forking 2 kings. Its important to take advantage of when someone is in check, because they cant respond to you it presents a great chance to d whatever you want to them, they cant take your queen if they have to respond to a check. I like using my opponents pieces to contribute to me mating someone

Also promoted queens are only worth 1 point when taken. So sacing them for say a bishop is probably reasonble

I only played three games, so didn't see this scenario come up, but do you actually lose if all three of your opponents get checkmated and you're still alive, but you didn't rack up enough points? That's super weird, but I guess it's a good rule to force people to be active.

Kind of fun variant though!

If one of the players already has more points than the maximum that anyone else can theoretically get by mating him, then an automatic win is awarded to him immediately, without playing until 3 mates. I saw such a situation in one of Daniel Rensch's or Tal Baron's Youtube videos, I don't remember which.

ive been playing this too, pretty fun, have actually had a lot of those situations where i get enough points that i win by resigning/claiming win.

Are you guys going for the bonus queen first?

I'm generally prefer to develop sensibly and slowly advance my pawns and find later on I get queens by slowly advancing pawns. It seems like if I go for a quick queen everyone tries to stop each other.

on the other hand I think that the players with the early queen arent doing well only because they are ******ed and dont know how to play with the queen. when I do get an early queen I find I crush

They have introduced team games. So far I am 7/7 in team games. even though I had a ******ed team mate in one who blundered his queen right away then blundered a bishop when I set him up to mate the other guy. Fortunately I was able to win that one on my own.

So far I've figured out that it's better to start an attack to the right because then they cant respond before your teammates turn. it also seems like there are a couple of diagonals that are important to be aware of. right in front of the knight because its easy to gang up on and you need to be very careful opening your queen pawn, one can take your bishop and the other can check with their bishop so your cant respond

also I haven't sen any queening yet because pawns promote on the 11th rank in teams

all right I had my fist loss. I got owned by the two queens coming out right away and hit e2/d2

also then got teamed with that same guy who beat me and we crushed with two quick queens out. but it was crazy because we got double mate! I mated red then my teammate mated yellow

4 Player Chess is F**ked.



This is my story

Got my alt to near top ten in free for all.

Got my main (my titled account) up as high as number 3 on the leaderboards.



The games were f**king stressful and finally broke me. I raged hard in chat, started beef and end up getting my main perm muted and lost half its privileges.

No more four chess for me.

Somehow I feel like I would classify that as a positive review, lol.

is there a bug with the ratings? twice I've come =1st and gained no points for either win

I've just started playing the odd game of this again. I had a really weird situation where I was 72 points, red was out at 17, blue was 29 but a weak king with few pieces and green was the only one with any sort of army but only had 19 points.

I was just down to a king and a stationary pawn but was probably looking at second due to the huge point edge. I ended up running my king toward blue and got stalemated in the corner. I wondered what would happen, turns out all remaining players got 10 points including me so I had 82 blue then resigned which gave me the win