THE GREATEST THING SINCE BOBBY FISCHER!

Finally a photo! White & Green vs Black & Brown. White goes first, then Green; then Black, then Brown.

With this variant, chess is now a family game. Parents can team up with or against their children, and you can team up with your girlfriend against buddies or siblings.

If the opposing team is made up of a 2200 rated player and a 1500 and you've a chance to trade off either of their queens, you may consider taking the 2200's queen even if taking the other one is clearly the better move. The 2200's queen is far more dangerous. Basically, if the opponents were Magnus and some 500 rated fellow, your team should probably launch a devastating combined attack against Magnus until he's beaten, and then eliminate the 500 chap with whatever may remain of your army. This only works though when suggestions aren't allowed.

In tournaments, once you know who you're playing against, each team has to come up with a game-plan before the game starts. It's actually pretty similar to how coaches draw a plan in other sports. At times, your rivals force you to change plans. [Maybe, [as in other sports] a limited amount of timeouts should also be allowed in tournaments for teammates to rethink and discuss their strategies.]

If you've a chance to sacrifice your queen for the opponents first king, you must weigh the position carefully before doing it.

Like the idea!

1) this should be in the varients section.

2) chess.com already has 4 player chess varients. I beleive the most popular are "4 player chess" and bughouse. You can't play them on the app but go on the website and you should find them. To my knowledge, adding such varients didn't skyrocket chess.com's popularity, but I wasn't here at the time, so who knows?

3) So far as I'm aware, Magnus Carlsen has never said standard chess is stale. He might have said so about classical chess, but this only refers to standard chess with 60+ minute time control, which barely anyone plays on chess.com anyway. You were probably thinking of Bobby Fischer, who did move to 960 after he invented it. However, to my undersranding Fischer was speaking back when GMs would play opening books rigidly, these days they often tend to go off-book to throw their opponent off; which might mean Fischer would like more modern chess if he was around to see it. Also, Fischer commented on other varients; he enjoyed them but worried they would be too confusing and thus favoured the simplicity of 960. I wonder if he might think the same about your varient.

@V_Awful_Chess

1) Correct, though I purposely put it here.

2) The only resemblance to my proposed variant in '4 player chess' and bughouse, are that there's 4 players and chess pieces. None of the variants I've seen with 4 players are even slightly similar to the format I'm suggesting, so your comment just gives the impression you haven't understood the idea. And though I've obviously exaggerated with my 'skyrocketing' prediction, I don't see why it warrants sarcasm.

3) My comment about Magnus calling it stale, was indeed about standard 'classical' chess, As for variants being too confusing: The whole point of this variant is its unique co-op, giving each player complete control over a full squad, but i kept it as similar to standard chess as possible. Obviously there will be those who won't appreciate it, but I'm sure that many will.

I don't think what I said really qualifies as sarcasm, but nevertheless was using rhetorical techniques.

Bughouse and "four player chess" do have differences with your varient; but so far the main selling point you are pushing is that it's a 2v2, and the other varients also qualify for this. I guess bughouse isn't a 2v2 on the same board so you can't use strategy of e.g. taking pieces of the stronger player, but you can in "4-player chess" and similar variants.

No doubt your varient is quite fun, and I might give it a try too, but you are rather over-selling it.

It's an additional one of many 4-person chess varients. It might well be a good one. But it won't overshadow normal chess for the same reason none of the other four-player varients have.

On Mangus, I think I'll rephrase because I didn't make myself clear. "Classical" chess does not refer to the board position, it refers to the time control. If Magnus said "classical" chess was stale, he was not saying that he considers 3|2 blitz games on chess.com stale, he is saying he considers 90-minute chess games in tournaments stale.

The way chess.com is set up aligns with Carlsen's preference for shorter games, as shorter time controls are promoted more and are used more often by the playerbase. Adding a varient does not do anything to align with Carlsen's concerns, because Carlsen has no problem with the standard chess board layout and ruleset.

@V_Awful_Chess

My selling point is 2v2 in what’s as similar as possible to regular chess. The '4 player chess' has 2v2 but its board and rules are very very different from chess as we know it.

My Magnus comment was that I think he'd enjoy 90-minute games of my variant, as opposed to 90-minute games of standard chess.

You're right it won't overshadow normal chess, but for those who wish for co-op in chess I believe this to be the best format for it.

Ok, so long as you're no longer making grand claims about it.

I will say the varient would probably be better if the sequence was white-black-green-brown instead of white-green-black-brown. As it is, white/green has too big an advantage, and one team being able to do 2 moves in sequence would just make checkmates too easy to achieve.

You may very well be right about white-black-green-brown, though it's got to be tested to say for sure. In my original draft i had the move order as you say, but then changed it to keep it simple as possible; 1 team, then the other.

By the way, I'd like to hear your opinion on stalemate. Do you think it should be only if both teammates cannot move a turn, or even if only the teammate with the second king cannot move? The problem with the latter is that it may be too easy for the losing team to force stalemate by having one color stalemate it's ally.

Well, haven't you previously established you can move into check if both players are active?

Also van one teammate check the other, relevant to this? If they can this should especially also affect castling.

Teammates cannot check each other or capture each other's pieces.

You can only move into check so long as your ally's king is still on board and isn't in check from the fourth color in a way that both can be captured in the coming turn. Players remain active even after losing their king, so long as their ally's king is still alive.

My question was if say: White's king has been captured and green cannot move, is that already stalemate, or is stalemate only if both teammates cannot move a turn?

Booby fisher G.O.A.T of chess

cool!

Sorry for a fly in the oinment, it's a pretty common situation in game-design, many gamers fontain the ideas about improving a game, every f time, seriously.

Try starting from football to realize what it means: make it 4 teams, give paintball guns to players, put stairs somewhere on the field or a labyrinth, then think why such never happened before for thousands of years (spoiler: not because billions of people were stupid;-))

Why wasn't I brought up?. I once missed two days of work, they are now referred to as the weekend.