Four player team - mate is broken

Hi.

Four player team mate auto-detect is broken.

There are many cases arising of an attempted mate that could be avoided, but the auto-detect is incorrectly giving mate.

I give you one of many cases I have seen. 

Green is assessed as mated by the auto-detect. But he can take Red's queen with his knight on m8, and Blue can take my yellow queen with his rook on d7, before I can take Green's king. In fact, in this case, it is only Blue's move that is necessary to avoid mate in this round of moves, but makes sense for Green to also capture Red's queen.

Either the auto-detector needs to be corrected to see these ways of escape which are only applicable to four player (maybe Free For All as well as Teams), or just scrapped altogether, and let the game end only when the king is captured (or drawn game, of course). 

Capture of king is already used, anyway, in Four Player Team, for the case of a revealed king, so easiest would be to scrap auto-detect and just use the king capture event in all cases.

Comments, suggestions?

Ending the game by king capture instead of checkmate is a topic that comes back from time to time. It is  decided to keep checks and checkmates though. Greens king is attacked and he has no move to avoid being in check. So he is checkmated. It is not broken, the rules are just defined this way.

Then, to be honest, the rules for two player are wrong for four player, and need to be defined differently.

In normal chess, a king can take an attacker, but will still himself be taken if that attacker is supported.

That is what mate means. That is equivalent to what you say, "has no move to avoid being in check", in single player, but not in two player.

Because that is the definition of losing, having your king taken, or at least, not being able to avoid having your king taken, which is the same thing, just clear from one move earlier.

So, that "no move to avoid being in check" definition of mate is fine for single player, because there is no way for single player to remove both the attacker and support. If he takes the attacker, the support will take him. That is why it is mate, because the king cannot avoid being taken.

But there is a way for two players to remove an attacker and support, or even just the attacker without exposing the king to another attacker.

This is why mate rules need to be different in 4 player vs two player. Or just abandoned completely and rely upon taking the king as the ultimate and unique arbiter of winning.

The problem is taking the rules for mate for two player and inadequately adapting them to 4 player.

To make it clear, mate is just "king can't avoid capture".

And, how do you explain the required, and implemented, capture of king by reveal?

Capturing the king is the final objective and arbiter of winning.

Mate is just a convention/custom of ending a game before the final capture of the king, no matter what "rules" are implemented for convenience.

Checkmate according to FIDE: "Where the king is attacked and cannot parry the threat."

Or explained in more detail:

"The objective of each player is to place the opponent’s king ‘under attack’ in such a way that the opponent has no legal move.
The player who achieves this goal is said to have ‘checkmated’ the opponent’s king and to have won the game. Leaving one’s own king under attack, exposing one’s own king to attack and also ’capturing’ the opponent’s king is not allowed."

Your definition of checkmate is different and would mean a stalemate results in a win. There are several ways the rules could be defined in 4-player, but the current rules are basically an interpretation of the traditional game. The exception being that king capture is allowed and results in a win (possible through discovered check).

I think the current rules are best if you want to keep the rule of not allowing moves that leave your king in check.

In this respect, Fide would be just another governing body that has lost its way.

I would interpret "... the threat." as being capture of the king. What else could it be? 

Calls to authority never trump logic. Come on, you can do better than that, surely.

"the current rules are basically an interpretation of the traditional game." - Exactly my point as to why this is not valid for four player; different game, thank you.

"I think the current rules are best if you want to keep the rule of not allowing moves that leave your king in check."  - But that is not the same as avoiding capture, which is the whole point of mate, no matter what any authority has claimed to the contrary, however convenient, conventional, or useful in a different game.

Either the definition of mate for four player is wrong, or the implementation is, or both. Either way, it is not working properly if it eliminates opportunities for avoidance of capture of king using moves otherwise normal.