Four-Player Chess. How to play

Board and pieces
Four-player chess is played on an 8x8 board that's extended by three rows of eight squares on each side. Basically, this is a 14x14 board with the 3x3 corners removed. https://worldseniors2014.org has 14 files, assigned the letters a-n, and 14 ranks, numbered 1-14. The overall game is used four regular sets of chess pieces, all of another colour. The colours used throughout this book are red, blue, yellow and green.

Players
The game is played with four players, each with their own group of pieces. The players will hereafter be referred to as Red, Blue, Yellow and Green, corresponding to the colour of these respective sets of pieces. Red may be the first player and makes the first move. Therefore, the typical board orientation is from Red's perspective, i.e. Red is shown in the bottom. The next player is Blue, who is seated on the left side of Red. Yellow is the third player and is seated across from Red. The last player is Green and is seated on the right side of Red, across from Blue. The game continues in clockwise order, i.e. Red, followed by Blue, accompanied by Yellow, accompanied by Green and Red again etc.

Initial position
Looking from each player's perspective, the pieces are arranged exactly the same way as in regular chess, with the exception that for Blue and Green the king and queen are swapped. That's, the rooks go in the corners, the knights are put next to the rooks and the bishops are placed next to the knights. All kings are placed on light squares and all queens are put on dark squares. The pawns are placed in front of the pieces. The board ought to be oriented such that the lower right square of the 8x8 central the main board is really a light square, when viewed from Red's perspective, just like a regular 8x8 chess board. (If you might imagine a whole 14x14 board, the "n1" square on underneath right should be a light square.)

With regards to files and ranks, Red's pieces are placed on the first rank and the pawns on the second rank, Yellow's pieces are put on the 14th rank and the pawns on the 13th rank, Blue's pieces are put on the a-file and the pawns on the b-file and Green's pieces are put on the n-file and the pawns on the m-file.

Rules

<img width="336" src="https://judgeme.imgix.net/chess-house/1554212288__4wayChess__original.jpg?auto=format">
There are two main variants of four-player chess: Free-For-All (FFA) and Teams. In the FFA variant each player plays on his own and in the Teams variant the players across from each other form a team. Pieces move exactly the same way as in regular chess and castling and en passant captures may also be the same.

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Pub: 10 Apr 2023 05:59 UTC
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