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Hi everyone, I’ve been thinking about how pins work in chess and wanted to propose a new variant: Null Pin Chess. The idea is to make absolute pins (where a piece is pinned to the King) even more impactful by neutralizing the pinned piece entirely. In this variant, a pinned piece not only can’t move—it also loses its ability to control squares. This means that any square a pinned piece would normally attack is no longer under threat, and the King can move through or onto those squares freely. A few key points about the mechanics: Absolute pins only: The rule applies only to absolute pins, where moving the pinned piece would expose the King to check. Relative pins work as usual. Pinned pieces lose all influence: Any square that would normally be under the control of a pinned piece is no longer threatened, and the King can move onto or through those squares safely. Pinning piece restrictions: The piece creating the pin can’t move off the pinning line if it would allow the pinned piece to attack its own King (e.g., exposing a discovered check or checkmate). Strategic impact: Pins become much more powerful, especially in the endgame, since pinned pieces no longer contribute to defense. It also adds a new layer of strategy when deciding whether to create or maintain a pin. I think this could lead to some interesting shifts in tactics. For example, in standard chess, pins are strong but still allow the pinned piece to control critical squares. Here, the nullification makes pins absolute in every sense of the word, creating opportunities for creative play and new patterns. I’d love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, or even critiques. Do you think this would work well as a variant, or are there unintended consequences I might have missed? Also, if anyone has suggestions for testing this or ideas for edge cases, I’d really appreciate it!

This time, I made a WoF instead of NCV and I hope it's good. Sorry because of previous (Knights vs Bishops), I didn't know that bishops are stronger than knights. (Edit: I now changed it from WoF to NCV)

https://www.chess.com/variants/custom/game/73992917

So I made this variant, it's not fully perfect and it'll probably get rejected in it's current form, so I'm open to any ideas you have. Rules: Atomic, KotH, Pawns promote to Knight, Camel or Wildebeest on 12th rank.

how is the new topic

I have a well, strange history here (and childish) some of my threads and submissions were straight up idiotic, others, hilarious. I have a couple of topics that I request just be deleted all together. https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/wof-undeck-the-halls https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/bug-1744 https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/undeck-the-halls-revised https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/wof-ferz-sea https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/wof-mini-man https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/wof-gustavs-box-2 https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/wof-game-3 Remember, I never existed in these... Also, I've grown up since then so please don't judge me!

Here you can rate my new variant on https://www.chess.com/variants/game/73538139

sorry for the time, it's that I am very busy in school so I may submit only one each two weeks .My old account(sabot3ur404) is now glitched and I can't use it. Meanwhile, I have made a interesting variant about giveaway and any capture (please add bare piece rule I forgot about that) which is about you trying to make others capture in a way so after they capture they eat more of their pieces. Can somebody make it better and submit it to variants world? Thanks to anybody who will do it(the improving is not needed) here is the game: https://www.chess.com/variants/custom/game/73686127 thank you and Merry Christmas!

Post from the vote in November: https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/vote-for-novembers-golden-variants Not sure on what some of the terms in this post mean? Have any other questions? See any typos? Feel free to ask and comment below! (Scroll down to the bold text if you want to know how to vote without reading my entire message ) Hello Custom Variants community! Welcome to the last Golden Variant vote of 2024! December is coming soon, and after that the end of the year. It's amazing how much we've come as a club since February. Here's our year in review thus far: 100s of variants submitted and reviewed (exact number not clear due to numbering bug) 14 WoFs (Wheel of Fortunes) accepted 8 NCVs (New Custom Variants) accepted 42 Golden Variant arenas by the end of 2024 3 Platinum Variant arenas by the end of 2024 4000+ new members (!!) Most Popular NCV: Minihouse by @MrKheese (600+ daily games/700+ active players, Platinum Variant #1) Just looking at this, this may have been one of the best years for Custom Variants ever! Thank you to everyone for your ongoing support for this club and the work that we all collectively do. On another note, at the time of the writing of this post, there are 17 variants currently Under Review; as you might expect, this is not exactly ideal, but we're working on it! We've been seeing a huge increase in NCV submissions specifically, which take longer to review. As we go into 2025, we'll make sure that we can improve this process. Another improvement we are hoping to make is to also encourage activity in 4P FFA and 4P Teams (non-Self-Partner) variants. In the past few years, activity for those variants have drastically decreased, and this is not something that we want! We are open to any and all suggestions, so please contact us by DMing one of the admins (of this club) if you have any! Now with that, let's get into the details! Want to see what variants were featured in previous Golden Variant arenas? See the schedule here: https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/2024-golden-variant-schedule This month's format: Four arenas, starting in December at 4 PM PST on Fridays (12 AM UTC on Saturdays) Golden Variant arenas will be 72 hours long, and Platinum Variant arenas will be 168 hours (1 week) long What you're voting for: Week 1 (December 6) will be a Golden Variant arena of the winner of StrawPoll #1 (Teams SP) Week 2 (December 13) will be a Golden Variant arena of the winner of StrawPoll #2 (2 Player) Week 3 (December 20) will be a Golden Variant arena of the winner of StrawPoll #3 (Teams SP) Week 4 (December 27) will be a Platinum Variant arena of the winner of StrawPoll #4 (Platinum) What is Platinum Variant? Platinum Variant was introduced this year as part of the revival of the Golden Variant cycle. Platinum Variant votes are special votes held once every 3 months (quarter) Candidates are the five Golden Variants with the most arena activity from a given quarter Winners of the Platinum Variant vote are considered the fastest rising variants and will likely become even more popular in the future Previous winners were Minihouse (by @MrKheese) and Ambush (by @coolthing) Who are the candidates this quarter for Platinum Variant? This quarter, the candidates are: The Lake (by @2bHNST) Best Friends Forever (by @stupnik_2_0) Rubicon (by @josephruhf) Explosive Magic (by @BN1208) Saturn's Rings (by @asthebird) The voting process: 3 Golden Variant StrawPolls, 1 Platinum Variant StrawPoll 3 variants per Golden Variant vote, 5 variants (listed above) for Platinum Variant vote Ranked-choice voting Each StrawPoll will have 1 winner (calculated using StrawPoll's ranked-choice vote system), and will be selected and scheduled as described above The polls will close on November 29 at 4 PM PST (November 30 at 12 AM UTC) StrawPoll Links: #1 (Teams SP): https://strawpoll.com/7MZ0kNvOrgo #2 (2 Player): https://strawpoll.com/X3nkPlNaLgE #3 (Teams SP): https://strawpoll.com/7rnzV8zJlnO #4 (Platinum Variant): https://strawpoll.com/GPgVYX9JBna Happy voting!

I was playing chess.com and my wifi was fine, but all of a sudden I keep disconnecting. I play on coolmathgames(don't ask why I didn't do lichess IDK) instead. I issue a couple challenges labeled as advanced. I played 20 games and all but 1 time my opponents played like a complete idiot. If any of you have played chess on coolmathgames what do you think the average elo of the players on there is?

All 3 declinations are my variants, for reference.

Hello Custom Variants community! We have just wrapped up the voting for the December Golden Variants, and now we want your feedback on how this year went and how we should run Golden Variant arenas next year! There are a few sections on the feedback form, being: Scheduling Voting Format Advertising Club Post On the form, you will be asked questions about these features and what went well or how we could change or improve them! All responses will be anonymous (we aren't collecting or mandating emails or chess.com usernames), but you can fill out your username at the end if you would like to be contacted by a CGA about your answers if you wish! This way, we can get more insights on how the series was run from a player perspective. Thanks to everyone again for supporting the Custom Variants club and the variants server this year! We have grown a lot this year as a club and a community and we hope next year will be even better! (If you have any questions pertaining to the form, please don't hesitate to reach out to me or another one of the CGAs or NCV Testers) Form Link (open until 1/1/2025) https://forms.gle/Gsd8hngANzFeqf2q8

everybody knows the fastest checkmate in chess is 2 moves, i.e. 1. f3 e5 2. g4 Qh4#. what if we take positions from other variants (that don't have the same position as usual, like 3+ or koth) and find the minimal possible checkmate (or win/loss in general). two that i am really interested in are rookmate and villager's chess.

Does anyone know why there is no option for there to be an atomic chess tournament? I tried to make a chess tournament with my friends, and we wanted it to be atomic, but that wasn't one of the options.

Just answer them, this is a very opinionated post. 1. If you had to bet 3 current UR submissions to be accepted, what would they be? 2. Should creators of variants be anonymous until the verdict? 3. Is it justified to put GD names on totally unrelated variants? 4. What are the differences of NCV and WOF creating and curating? 5. In general, are variant naming trends harmful? 6. Should there be another merge? If yes, why? 7. Should variant submitting criteria stricten? (1 Submission per week, 20 testing games, 10 for 4pc) 8. Should variants that use a chess.com bug as a feature be allowed?  9. Do we need new pieces? If yes, How urgent is it? 10. Should the community be able to vote on variant verdicts?

https://www.chess.com/blog/BN1208/2-player-ncv-tier-list Here’s yet another variant tier list! Yes. But I can really only do 2-player variants for now, because clearly I am not a 4P expert (lol). If you want to compare with other tier lists, here are 3 that I found: https://www.chess.com/blog/Real-ChessMasterGS/variants-tier-list-3-years-later https://www.chess.com/blog/jackityjackjack/variants-tier-list https://www.chess.com/blog/imchesspro0930/variants-tier-list

I don't know if it's good or not, this is my first variant, but I enjoy my games playing it, and would like both testers and input! It is called Kamikaze pawns and is a crazyhouse atomic game of points with isolated royals and pawn walls. Let me know what you think!!! https://www.chess.com/variants/custom/game/73286491

You know how these went from Alphabet, to Lobotomy, to Geometry Dash right?  But Geometry Dash is getting boring. so I think it's time for a new naming trend. As I recommended in Notes, We put a name and a noun at the end.  Something like Isabelle's Warfare (The point is that it cannot be your real name!) What do you think?

So, this is my first major forum post on this club. pretty much everyone here has a post for their ideas for variants, and I thought, "Well, why not?" So here we go- 1. Move 2 (Or more) chessThis is an idea I have had since I started playing chess, and I mentioned it in a few other articles around this club. The idea is that each player gets 2 moves per turn, and your turn ends when you check or capture a piece. This would be pretty unfeasible on a normal board, but with the right combo of bricks, pieces and board this would be a really cool idea. Actually, if you think about it, its just a tag team but better2.Fairy pieces but betterSo this would be pretty simple to implement, but I'm guessing very disastrous. The idea is that you have a piece creator, that lets you make your own custom piece with custom movements. This would probably make the community happy. The drawbacks, however, is that people will probably make ridiculous pieces that can move anywhere on the board. Also, more complex pieces will also not be able to be made (I think?)3.Custom SpellsPLEASE! Ever since I saw Spell chess, I thought that over time, Chess.com would add more spells to the gamemode. But since then, I have been dissapointed. More spells would be such an excellent idea to the game rule, and it need not be added to the original game mode itself. Some spells would be like a trapper, which stores a piece outside the board for 1 move (Making the previously occupied square empty) or a reviver, which can bring back a piece you lost to your opponent. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------TL;DR- Chess but more moves per turn, custom variant piece maker and more spells are a cool idea----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Wow, I spent wayyyyy too long formatting that

(NCV List from last year: https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/all-ncvs-on-the-variants-server) NCVs War for Throne, by @qilp Gustav's Box, by @qilp Behind the Scenes, by @qilp BlindGold, by @qilp Glass Labyrinth, by @qilp The Four Horsemen, by @qilp Unique, by @qilp Labyrinth 82, by @qilp and @spacebar Underground War, by @qilp and @bsrti Collateral Worlds, by @bsrti Unison, by @bsrti Inferno, by @bsrti Salvation Bastions, by @bsrti Storming the Castle, by @bsrti Counterturn, by @bsrti Sergeants Laboratory, by @Cyprian2206 Grasshopper Arena, by @Cyprian2206 XXL Chess, by @Arseny_Vasily Mini Forest, by @Arseny_Vasily Infiltration Danger, by @RALRAL3333 Stone Gravitation, by @RALRAL3333 Trapped Queens, by @RALRAL3333 Best Friends Forever, by @stupnik_2_0 Castle on a Hill, by @stupnik_2_0 Euler's Game, by @stupnik_2_0 Phalanx, by @stupnik_2_0 The Triune Wasp, by @stupnik_2_0 Chaturdrez, by @martinaxo Ashtandrez, by @martinaxo Blackletter Chess, by @josephruhf Rubicon, by @josephruhf Crazy Cavalier, by @josephruhf Amazon Jungle by @Joshua_Allen Together, by @Joshua_Allen Simplicity, by @2bHNST Enchanted Woodland, by @2bHNST Sparks of Hope, by @2bHNST The Lake, by @2bHNST Rookmate, by @chye3mc Every End, by @chye3mc Tag Team, by @coolthing Ambush, by @coolthing The Eyes of Horus, by @JkCheeseChess Behind the Mirror, by @samuelysfung Paradigm Chess30, by @lollder and @CoachCraig007 Sergeant's Checkers, by @Maximillian99 The X of Tricks, by @itisSHOWTIME Villagers Chess, by @Baqueano Villagers Chess II, by @Night-Rider_chess8987 Thermopylae, by @noahfavelo Arena of Legends, by @MasterMemesEli Throne War Mini, by @4Player-Pug King Safety, by @reexamine Battle of Castles, by @Johnny_Fang Color Blinds, by @ila12345 Surprise Attack, by @Automaton_Dragon The Hive, by @jgutsies Blind Box, by @Kumiyno and @Lingox Detour, by @TheUltraTrap Find the Path, by @IntelligentChessOwl8 Golden Ratio, by @Automaton_Dragon Warp Speed, by @race100000 Diamond Wall, by @LIEVSE Antitower, by @6_K X File (stylized as 𝕏 F̷i̷l̷e̷ ☣), by @7R0N1C Emperor's Tomb, by @BoxJellyfishChess Minihouse, by @MrKheese Caught in a Snag, by @nochinator1 Cross Derby, by @xXMagolorXx Pit Racer, by @Red_Kangaroos Warui-shogi, by @Dan-kyu_system