Mr. Joseph's Four Player Chess
©5-12-2012
Joseph Friedman
The goal of Four Player Chess is to score the most points by checkmating opponents as often as possible within the time period you set to play.
Equipment:
4 flat chessboards
2 chess sets where the two black sides can be told apart and the two white sides can be told apart. For example, play with two sets where one is plastic and one is wood, or one set is bigger than the other, or all four sides are different colors.
Set up:
The four boards are going to be laid on top of each other in the following arrangement so that the number of columns across and ranks going down will total 14 by 14:
Step 1.
Step 3.
Step 4.
Before beginning play, agree on a set period of time for the game, such as one hour. The youngest player goes first and play continues in a clockwise direction. For example, if Pink White was youngest, Orange Black goes next, then Yellow White, and finally Purple Black.
How to play:
The King, Queen, Knight, Bishop, and Rook all move as in normal chess.
The Pawns move differently.
As seen on the red board below, the Yellow White Pawn can, on it’s very first move, move one square forward, one square backward, one square sideways OR as seen on the black board like the Orange Black Pawn it can also move TWO squares forward. After that it can only move one square forward, one square backward, or one square sideways like the Purple Black Pawn over on the blue board. To capture, the Pawn moves in one square diagonally forward or one square diagonally backward, like the Pink White Pawn on the green board.
Also, there is no promoting of Pawns and Pawns cannot capture en passant.
There is also no castling.
As in regular chess, the goal is to checkmate your opponent. However, in Four Player Chess, you have three different opponents that you can checkmate and three different opponents who can checkmate you. Also, one or two of those opponents can work with you to checkmate the third, though they may decide not to help.
When a player is put in check, they must wait until it is their turn before they can try to get out of check. This means it might be possible for other players to move in and help turn a check into a checkmate.
For example: Below on the green board the Yellow White Rook, the Orange Black Queen, and the Purple Black Rook are working together to checkmate the Pink White King.
Once a checkmate occurs, the next step is to record points earned by the Yellow player, the Orange player, and the Purple player.
Points are awarded as follows:
If a player is involved in a checkmate of an opponent, depending on what piece(s) they used to aid or cause the checkmate, they get the following number of points.
If you used a Queen, you get 1 point.
If you used a Rook, you get 2 points.
If you used a Knight, you get 3 points.
If you used a Bishop, you get 4 points.
If you used a Pawn, you get 5 points.
If you used a King, you get 6 points.
ALSO, if your piece is one that is doing the direct attacking, you get 1 bonus point. Of course, since a King can never stand next to another King, it can never get a bonus point.
So, looking at the above example:
The Orange Queen would get one point for being Queen plus one bonus point for being the direct attacker.
The two Rooks, Purple and Yellow, would each get 2 points for being Rooks and assisting in the checkmate.
Players can of course have more than one of their own pieces involved in a checkmate and so get points for ALL of their pieces involved.
Then, the pieces that were involved in the doing the checkmating are automatically captured by the checkmated player, the Pink player as seen below.
Next, the checkmated player gets all his pieces back and sets up his side just as the game began. If there are any opponents pieces on his two starting rows, such as in this case the Yellow White Pawn, then that player captures those pieces automatically as well. If it happens that one of those pieces on the two starting rows is an opponent’s King, the player who just got checkmated chooses an unoccupied square on the board THAT DOES NOT PUT THE KING INTO AUTOMATIC CHECK and puts that opponent’s King there.
The checkmated player, Purple, then makes a move and play continues until the time set for play has run out. If two or more players are tied at that time, the game ends in a draw.
While this game is of course meant for four players, should a player happen to have to leave the game, just remove that player's King from the board but leave the rest of the pieces where they are. Continue play and skip over that missing player when it would be his turn. His pieces cannot be moved but they can be captured. If a new player can join the game, put the King back where it was when it is that new player's first turn and continue play as normal.
While this game is of course meant for four players, should a player happen to have to leave the game, just remove that player's King from the board but leave the rest of the pieces where they are. Continue play and skip over that missing player when it would be his turn. His pieces cannot be moved but they can be captured. If a new player can join the game, put the King back where it was when it is that new player's first turn and continue play as normal.
