Four-player chess

Four-player chess, often shortened to 4PC, is a family of formats for four people on one shared board. A widely used online design is a cross-shaped board with 160 squares and four piece colors. Players move one at a time around the board, usually in clockwise order.

The pieces largely retain their familiar movements, but four armies transform attack lines, king safety, and the timing of threats. A move may attack one opponent while one or two other players still receive turns before that opponent can answer.

Two main formats

• Teams: players seated opposite each other are usually partners. They cannot capture a teammate's pieces and seek to defeat one of the opposing kings. Coordination is part of the game when the rules allow it.
• Free-for-All, abbreviated FFA: every player competes individually. Common platforms award points for captures, mates, meaning attacks on a king with no legal defense, and other achievements; the highest final score wins.

There is no single universal 4PC rule set. Pawn promotion, meaning replacement of a pawn after it reaches the far edge, capture values, the exact moment a mate becomes final, the treatment of an eliminated army, and communication rules vary among modes and servers. Even one platform may offer Teams, FFA, Solo, and customized variants with different conditions.

The term therefore identifies a multiplayer family more accurately than one fixed game. Before starting, players need to know the move order, the winning condition, and what happens after an elimination. Those rules determine whether cooperation, point collection, or an immediate mating attack is the main objective.