Three-person chess
I’ve played four-person chess and Go as two teams of two each, no conferring. This works reasonably well, with the weaker player on each team sort of softening the effectiveness of the better player, so both teams struggle along.
Three-person is rather different, since all three are playing and any temporary partnerships dissolve in the face of opportunity. (I’ve read that three-person teams are frequent in enforcement situations: a two-person team can quickly reach agreement to collude but a three-person team is less stable: each must fear becoming the odd man out, with the other two colluding against him, so stable cooperation is difficult.)
Here’s a three-person variant of chess. Has anyone tried it?
Haven’t tried it because the board costs a small fortune. But man, I would love to!
zaine_ridling
10 October 2011 at 4:20 am
I would too, though it looks incredibly confusing. How do you figure out diagonals that intersect with the middle dot? Or are pieces allowed inside there? That would make more sense, I guess.
I’ve played 4-player chess, and it’s a lot of fun. I found the best strategy was to play slightly conservatively, and to try not to incite the ire of too many people. Best to go for the straight checkmate whenever possible.
scottbartlett
10 October 2011 at 10:23 am
If you look carefully, you’ll see that the diagonals are drawn through that middle square to show the correct continuation.
In 4-person Go (two teams of two) you can develop the same partner-hatred that is so often seen in contract bridge.
A careful plan, a set-up, and then your partner makes the pessimally bad move. (I don’t quite know the antonym of “optimally,” so I just took a stab at it.)
LeisureGuy
10 October 2011 at 11:56 am
Oh wow, those diagonals look like they would make for one crazy game of chess!
When I played 4-player chess, we played free-for-all, so I couldn’t blame anything on my partner
scottbartlett
11 October 2011 at 5:05 pm