The title is self explanatory.

Start a pinned hall of fame thread, with the winners from each game.

 http://www.chess.com/groups/forumview/leaderboard

I'm on another chess site where they do a lot of variant games in the forums. However, they do them almost exclusively with FEN strings, which the forums can interpret as position diagrams.

I don't know if Chess.com's forums are able to directly interpret FEN strings, but they do have a nice diagram insertion tool. You can post a diagram, and on the diagram there will be a "FEN/PGN" button. From that you can get the FEN, and easily make another diagram of the same game with one more move made.

My point? As long as the game can be represented using a FEN string, we don't need an admin to keep track of the games and edit the diagram in the first post. Each time a player makes a move, they can post a new diagram with the current position. This will mean that the admins (that's you, Oinquarki) will only have to spend time monitoring the threads with games that can't be represented by FEN strings.

There's lots of games that could be played this way:

• Alice Chess
• Atomic Chess
• Avalanche Chess
• Benedict Chess
• Berolina Chess
• Chess480
• Crazyhouse
• Cylindrical Chess
• Knightmate
• Maseillais Chess
• Progressive Chess
• Shuffle Chess
• Suicide Chess 

And I'm sure a bunch others I don't know of the top of my head. You could even play games like Shatranj and Makruk with the same number of pieces, even though they move differently.

Don't get me wrong. I really appreciate the effort you are putting into this group running all the games (and I'm willing to help out if you ever decide you need it). It just seemed like this would be a more efficient use of your energy.

That is a very good idea and I will try and implement that in the next new game which can be made with the chess.com diagrams.

In the second crazyhouse and cylindrical games which haven't started I already wrote in the rules at the top of the page how what to do with the diagrams.

 I would very much like to play a game of Alice Chess.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_chess

http://www.chess.com/groups/forumview/first-alice-chess-game

So if we want to start a new game, do you prefer that we post it in this thread, or should we just start threads on our own (assuming we can do it with standard diagrams)?

You can post it in the group notes. You can make your own thread too if you want. Nobody is stopping you. 

This thread is just for new variants or ideas.

how about fireball and fireball bughouse.

What is fireball?

An idea for a new variant has just popped into my head!

Instead of a regular move a player can opt to swap the positions of any two of his pieces (including pawns). Perhaps you shouldn't be allowed to swap your king out of check, just like you can't castle out of check. I'd like to offer the idea for appraisal, and let the better players tweak the idea if fine tuning is required.

What about a more restricted version where if one of your pieces could capture another one of your pieces, they can swap places as a move?

fireball is like regular chess except when you take a piece your piece blows up and kills all ajactent pieces,including the king.and no,im not joking.

 That's also called Atomic Chess.

 ive never heard of it like that.

I have also heard it called atomic chess. I've never heard anyone besides you call it fireball. In normal chess it seems to mess up the game because of the enoumous advantage which would come with the first move, but your idea of fireball bughouse should lead to some very crazy attacking play.

I will make a game for both types, normal and bughouse, but it will be with the rule that prevents pawns from getting killed in atomic blasts (unless they are either captured or making the capture). This should make it more even.

Of course, if you'd like I can make another game where the pawns do get exploded.

idea- we start doing varient tourneys.

 We don't have enough players to make a really big tournament, but we could start a small round robin or knockout tournament of some sort. A bughosue tounrament sounds like a lot of fun. I'll try and set it up.