Week 11

 This week I played another variant of chess. The variant is called 4-player Chess. The variant has a free-for-all mode and a teams mode. I played the teams mode.

In the teams mode of 4-player chess, there is four players. The players are on a larger modified board that is in the shape of the cross. Each player's pieces are on one end of the cross-looking board. The players that are directly across from each other are partners. When one of the players checkmates one of the opposing team's players, their team wins. Partners can draw arrows on the board to suggest moves or threats to pieces that only they, and not their opposing team, can see.

The game I played had timers on each player's turn. If the player didn't move before the timer ran out, the opposing team automatically won. This timer made me feel pressured. I noticed almost immediately that my partner was more experienced than me and pointed out threats I exposed myself to at the start of the game. My team won the game because a player from the opposing team timed out.

The variant had an interesting aspect of two minds working together to win the game. In regular chess, and all the variants I played so far, the game consisted of one mind competing against another.