4 way chess

I like to play chess and enjoy playing with friends. Recently we have begun to play 4 way chess and it is very fun. Except that we only know one way to play it. If there is anyone who knows other rules for playing a 4 way chess game I would greatly appreciate it if you shared them.

Note: There are a few different ways to play 4 player chess and the one I am asking about is pictured here

I play four way chess at the office during lunch sometime. We have teams that play each other and tournaments twice a year. It is more fun when you have a partner to help you with the strategy.

Nice, will Chess.Com have that someday?  I might buy a crown.

I looked at the wiki article on it, and it seems as though the only special rule associated with 4 way chess is that the pawn can promote when they reach the last rank of any of the three sides, as opposed to just the rank that is directly on the opposite side of the player.  If there are teams, the players of the same team are placed opposite of each other.

I would hate to play this game free-for-all.  I'd imagine that all of the players would just turtle inside their own territory since engaging another player would most likely create an oppening for the other two players to take advantage of.  A team game of this would be interesting though, since the two players on the same team can work together in some circumstances to promote each others' pawns.

I don't know, or, have ever heard of this, but it sure looks cool to me.

Could be worth my time for an evening.

I do have a few questions regarding the rules that wikipedia did not elaborate on.  If one player gets mated in a team game, does the entire team lose or just the player that got mated?  And if the latter is true, are the pieces of the mated player removed from the board or are they left as is?  Same goes for when one player is stalemated.

Similarly, in an ffa game, when one player loses or is stalemated, does the game continue with the three remaining players?  If so, what happens to the pieces belonging to the one player that got mated/stalemated?

I made a board and played it with my friends once.

The rules we used were these:

- There are four kingdoms (North vs. East vs. South vs. West)

- One can form an alliance with another kingdom, as long as both agree

- Kings can be captured except the second last king standing. The piece who captured a king becomes the new king of the pieces the captured king ruled over. That piece will move like a king from that move on.

- If one of your "proxy kings" ("Prime Ministers) gets captured, the controller of that king will lose control over the pieces that that king rules over.

- If your initial king gets captured or checkmated, you lose.

Hours of fun for everyone!

By the way, the board I played on was an 8x8 board with 4x8 rectangles on each of its sides, instead of the 2x8 depicted in your photograph.

The real rules are, if you checkmate someone, you get all their remaining pieces (except the king) and their turn! Ditto for stalemate. None of the rest of the rules are differrent. You can play as teams or not; the rules don't change.

Yup. Pawns and knights more or less become useless. The way I played had it so if your king got captured you lost all your pieces and it becomes a 2v1. My team won by checking one player constantly with one army and capturing his pieces with the other army since he had no time to protect them.

That's weird...

I understand how that would work for checkmate, but for stalemate, there could be more than one player responsible for the stalemate (i.e. one player may be blocking one of two escape squares for your king while the second escape square is covered by another player, and your only remaining piece besides the king is a pawn which is blockaded by a piece belonging to a third player, etc.).  Something like the diagram below.

I understand that this would be pretty rare, but how would that work out as far as the official rules are concerned?

EDIT: I guess there could be a two player checkmate as well: a discovered double-check checkmate involving two pieces belonging to two different players.

Regicide Rules are posted at my web-site

http://fourwaychess.webs.com/

You can buy the 4-Way Chess set at American Chess Equipment

http://www.amchesseq.com/644chsetcowi.html

Is it tough to get four people together to play chess?

this looks sick.

I have never played 4 way chess. I'd love to try!