Forchess

Forchess is a four-player chess variant invented by the American engineer T. K. Rogers around 1975. It is played on a single standard chessboard using two complete sets of chess pieces, with the four players divided into two teams of two whose partners sit diagonally opposite one another. Each player controls an entire quadrant of the board with a nearly full set of pieces, one pawn short of a standard army, and takes turns in rotation around the board. Rogers designed the game to combine the pure strategy of chess with the social dynamic of a partnership card game such as bridge, reasoning that a more social form of chess might broaden the game's popular appeal. Because partners must plan together while sitting apart from one another at the board, open verbal coordination of strategy becomes an explicit part of play rather than an incidental habit. A game typically runs between thirty and ninety minutes and ends when one team loses both of its kings or concedes.