Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

i had to edit my rating because i did not fully understand your rules
earlier, i think it is a pretty interesting variant too, making unique
situations. there is also another variant in ancient chaturanga with the
idea in 'all vs all' of taking over the army of the king you capture,
but first you must place the king you capture, from off board, in to a
zone, your or their starting position, i forget. that variant is
interesting too.
pretty cool game you got here i think.

a friend of mine had one of these sets... it was called 'battle chess' or
somesuch... for all intents and purposes, it was the same as one pictured
here... with 2 players, you could play 'corners' where each player had
two neighboring colors, or you could play 'criss cross' where each
player controlled two colors opposite one another... you could also play
with 4 players, or with 3 players... there are a lot of possible
variations... once we had 3 players and made the 4th color operable by all
3 of us... we took turns making the 4th army's moves... :)

in any event, like any other variant, this sort of game can sharpen your
wits for FIDE chess by exercising your brain 'outside of the box'... and
perhaps that's at least one of the reasons we play, 'chess variants'...

all in all, i highly recommend 'taurus chess'...

Hi, Stephen. In our game against you, Eric and I were under the apparently
mistaken assumption that we could confer with one another. Clearly didn't
help us much but that's what we did. Now, I'm reading over these comments
and I see that we weren't supposed to, otherwise you wouldn't have the
admonition, 'never trust your partner.' Can I suggest that you allow
partners to confer with one another as part of the rules of the world
championship. This would increase game quality and allow for partners to
feel that they are truly cooperating with one another. How will the
tournament be structured? With what time parameters? 

To everyone else: 4-Way Chess is great fun and I encourage everyone to
enter this tournament, either by themselves or with a partner. Is anyone
interested in being my partner? (even though I've only played one game of
4-Way Chess and lost quickly?)

My new web-site address is:

http://fourwaychess.webs.com/

I like the concept of multi-player chess variants (or ones in which two players each control more than one army, which is how this game is currently played on Game Courier), and perhaps there ought to be more of these. The problem of how to handle the surviving pieces of an army whose king has been captured (if not mated) may be a bit tricky to do in a reasonable way (i.e. in order to make it worthwhile for good players continuing to play out such a game further, at least at times). I think this particular variant seems to solve that problem well enough - if nothing else the variant is well tested and continues to be played, I gather!

My tentative estimates for the piece values in this variant would be: P=1; N=2.5; B=3.25; R=5.75; Q=10 and the fighting value of a K=1.6 (if the first of one team's kings is captured, ostensibly winning an exchange value of 1.6, add to this exchange value a periodically recalculated bonus of [sum of the value of the pieces and pawns in the remainder of that king's army, for as long as any of it remains on the board]x0.8 for virtually immobilizing the remainder of that army, with full value awarded for any virtually immobilized pieces that are subsequently captured); note that naturally the second of a team's kings cannot be allowed to be captured without the loss of the game.

I'm not clear on the promotion rules for this game (no Game Courier games thus far have included promotions, btw). My guess would be that a pawn must promote when it cannot legally move otherwise, if it moves. However, captures make it possible for a pawn to reach some pretty strange dead end files, not necessarily in the opposite end zone to which it began the game(!).

As a long aside, I'm toying with the idea of making a variant(s) on 4-way chess for Game Courier (there exists one for a so-called Double-Capablanca 4-way chess version already, but it's little played so far). In looking at the Alfarie: Many piece set, there is offered a small number of piece types for several coloured armies. These piece types include the Rotating Spearman piece, but, frustratingly, I cannot see the use of it for play on Game Courier at least (it could be used just for a page of a game, however). That's as there is offered only one figurine (each colour) with the spear pointed straight ahead, not at least two more of the various colours where the spear is diagonally turned to the left or to the right (not to mention other possible orientations for e.g. a 4-way chess variant board).