This is the Custom Variants Club Directory, where the most important forum threads are compiled and categorized! So whether you need information on how to submit a variant, a guide on how to make one, or something else, this can help out!
This thread will be periodically updated, so keep an eye out for changes! Use the bold titles on the sections to quickly find sections you want to read. Hopefully, with this, we'll have less clutter in the forum as there won't need to be as many pinned threads...
(P.S., this is a good resource to link people to at any time if you want to recommend a guide or two. Remember to give constructive feedback to variants!)
This post introduces some of the variant rules and pieces added in the major update in 2022, as well as explain the composition rating system, one of the categorization systems for variants, and some more!
This is probably one of the most important pages out there for variants on chess.com! If you are uncertain on how to use the custom position editor, this is the best starting point!
"Who is [on] the CGA team" was a question asked in 2020; the main response will therefore be outdated, but it shows how you can tell who is on the Custom Games Admin team at any time by using chess.com clubs' Super Admin/Admin/Coordinator feature.
In composition ratings, you may have seen things like "Materialistic", or "Positional". These are gameplay types, or classifications, which this post details.
Want to know how many community member-made NCVs (New Custom Variants) there currently are on the server? What about who created them? One of our CGAs @BN1208 has made a Google Spreadsheet that shows the author of each NCV, as well as some other information on every variant as well!
Creating a Variant
Are you ready to become a variant creator? Anybody can become one, and everyone is welcome to try!
NCVs (as explained earlier) are a category of variant denoting community-made variants that are skill-based and are listed on chess.com/variants; this guide explains what the basic vision of a variant creator looking to make this type of variant should be!
Similarly to the post above, this is a guide on some common trends amongst declined variants, and can give you some pointers on how to avoid making the same mistakes!
This is a guide on "autodecline", which is when a variant is quickly declined. The guide shows the guidelines that the Custom Games Admins (CGAs) use when considering an autodecline, and includes some very important testing tips!
Similarly, this is a guide on “self-decline”, which is when the author of a variant wants to decline their own variant. This guide also explains why a creator might request one, as well as how to request one if it is ever needed!
This is an announcement by our current head CGA @qilp, and details part of the review process and what the CGAs are looking for. The main focus of the post is concerning variants that are too similar to each other, and how variants with similar concepts should be innovative and unique.
Many variants have similar patterns in gameplay or in the goal of the game, such as "checking the opponent before a certain move". This thread explains many of the different patterns that occur in the many variants on the server!
"Why do CGAs need us to test games?" was a question posed by a player in 2020; if you're wondering the same thing, the responses here by former CGAs make some good points!
There are many variants that use check asymmetry (one side has more n-check lives than the other); this thread details how you can edit the FEN4 of an n-check variant to allow for this!
Want to analyze a position at a deeper level using engines? Learning Fairy Stockfish is a pretty technical process, but it's not impossible, and this thread can help simplify things.
There are many criteria to making a good variant, of course, but the most important one is using the right pieces! Understanding how pieces interact with each other and with different gamerules is crucial to designing a well-balanced, beginner-friendly, and fun-to-play variant.
Submitting Variants
Now that you've created a variant and are ready to submit, here are some resources that will help you during that process!
This is the best place to start to get the gist of the basics. It helps more with defining the main variant categories of "NCV" (New Custom Variant) and "WoF" (Wheel of Fortune) and their respective arena schedule.
This is a video guide on how to use Variants World (https://variants.world), which was created by chess.com to host an archive of previously submitted positions and to also serve as a submission platform.
Once a variant has been reviewed, its verdict will be posted on the submission page, as well as on this thread linked above! There's a handy Q/A there as well, which will explain more on what the different results are.
Golden Variants
Golden Variants was started in 2021 as "Variant of the Week" and evolved into its current form in 2024. Want to know the most up-to-date information on how this weekly arena operates? These are some helpful threads!
This is the most recent Golden Variant announcement post, and shows the most recent voting format as well as information on how the arenas will operate.
This is a list of all variants that have been featured as a Golden Variant or Platinum Variant so far every week in 2025, along with arena dates and announcement posts from each month.
Creator Challenges
These started in 2025 with the creation of "Pocket Chess", a challenge where all variants participating had to fulfill certain variant design requirements. Want to see what influenced some of the variants submitted? Check out these challenges, made by the community!
Pocket Chess basic rules: Must have 6x6 board and use the RY color theme.
Historical Threads
You might hear references to things like "cgabot" and the "merge", or an important event, and you might have no idea what that's all about! These threads are historically important and can help explain past conventions.
cgabot was a program that utilized chess.com's forum API to sort and automatically format forum threads, and was active during 2021-2023 before being replaced by Variants World. These 3 information posts detail the 3 different versions of cgabot.
Variants World is the current submission platform used that only requires chess.com account authentication to access! It does a lot of stuff that cgabot used to do but faster and much more efficiently. These information posts detail changes made to the website.
NCV Testers are extensions of the CGA team and serve as helpers. Applications (like the ones listed above) are released every few months/years as members of the team fluctuate and as NCV Testers become CGAs.
A replacement of the traditional Holiday Hootenanny arena, Festive Fortune 2024 was the first ever prized event hosted by the modern Custom Variants club, and featured the WoF "Treehouse Battle" in a weeklong arena where the top 3 players earned a membership award.
This is a list of all variants that were featured as a Golden Variant or Platinum Variant in 2024, along with the original arena dates as well as the announcement posts for each month.
Historical Threads (4 Player Chess Club)
Some important threads pertaining to custom variants were actually made prior to the creation of this club! These posts are a bit harder to track down, but here are the most notable ones!
This was the original thread used for submitting NCVs (then called New Custom Positions or NCPs), in a format similar to the Workshop thread currently in this club. Many of these variants no longer exist on the current Variants server, but a select few have remained!
This was the first ever prized event held related to WoFs by the CGA team. Sixty 24-minute WoF arenas were played on Fools' Day in 2024, with the player who won the most of these arenas winning a membership prize. Ironically, 3 CGAs came in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, and they offered the prize to the 4th place player.
Transparency/Progress Reports
The CGAs here at chess.com are all volunteers. Nonetheless, we wish to be as transparent as possible, show what our process is, and own up to our mistakes. These are some reports written by @ChessMasterGS (a CGA) which have been released periodically in 2023 and 2024.
Having trouble...
This is the Custom Variants Club Directory, where the most important forum threads are compiled and categorized! So whether you need information on how to submit a variant, a guide on how to make one, or something else, this can help out!
This thread will be periodically updated, so keep an eye out for changes! Use the bold titles on the sections to quickly find sections you want to read. Hopefully, with this, we'll have less clutter in the forum as there won't need to be as many pinned threads...
(P.S., this is a good resource to link people to at any time if you want to recommend a guide or two. Remember to give constructive feedback to variants!)
General Custom Variants Info
This post introduces some of the variant rules and pieces added in the major update in 2022, as well as explain the composition rating system, one of the categorization systems for variants, and some more!
This is probably one of the most important pages out there for variants on chess.com! If you are uncertain on how to use the custom position editor, this is the best starting point!
"Who is [on] the CGA team" was a question asked in 2020; the main response will therefore be outdated, but it shows how you can tell who is on the Custom Games Admin team at any time by using chess.com clubs' Super Admin/Admin/Coordinator feature.
In composition ratings, you may have seen things like "Materialistic", or "Positional". These are gameplay types, or classifications, which this post details.
Want to know how many community member-made NCVs (New Custom Variants) there currently are on the server? What about who created them? One of our CGAs @BN1208 has made a Google Spreadsheet that shows the author of each NCV, as well as some other information on every variant as well!
Creating a Variant
Are you ready to become a variant creator? Anybody can become one, and everyone is welcome to try!
NCVs (as explained earlier) are a category of variant denoting community-made variants that are skill-based and are listed on chess.com/variants; this guide explains what the basic vision of a variant creator looking to make this type of variant should be!
This is a pretty funny user-created post that shows some examples of flawed positions and why they would be declined if submitted!
Another user-created post that has some pretty neat advice on how to create and (most importantly) how to make the most out of testing your variant!
Similarly to the post above, this is a guide on some common trends amongst declined variants, and can give you some pointers on how to avoid making the same mistakes!
This is a guide on "autodecline", which is when a variant is quickly declined. The guide shows the guidelines that the Custom Games Admins (CGAs) use when considering an autodecline, and includes some very important testing tips!
Similarly, this is a guide on “self-decline”, which is when the author of a variant wants to decline their own variant. This guide also explains why a creator might request one, as well as how to request one if it is ever needed!
This is an announcement by our current head CGA @qilp, and details part of the review process and what the CGAs are looking for. The main focus of the post is concerning variants that are too similar to each other, and how variants with similar concepts should be innovative and unique.
Need some quick feedback? Want to find testers for your variant? This thread is perfect for that!
Many variants have similar patterns in gameplay or in the goal of the game, such as "checking the opponent before a certain move". This thread explains many of the different patterns that occur in the many variants on the server!
"Why do CGAs need us to test games?" was a question posed by a player in 2020; if you're wondering the same thing, the responses here by former CGAs make some good points!
There are many variants that use check asymmetry (one side has more n-check lives than the other); this thread details how you can edit the FEN4 of an n-check variant to allow for this!
The comments on this thread offer an extension to the FEN4 tricks shown above!
Want to analyze a position at a deeper level using engines? Learning Fairy Stockfish is a pretty technical process, but it's not impossible, and this thread can help simplify things.
There are many criteria to making a good variant, of course, but the most important one is using the right pieces! Understanding how pieces interact with each other and with different gamerules is crucial to designing a well-balanced, beginner-friendly, and fun-to-play variant.
Submitting Variants
Now that you've created a variant and are ready to submit, here are some resources that will help you during that process!
This is the best place to start to get the gist of the basics. It helps more with defining the main variant categories of "NCV" (New Custom Variant) and "WoF" (Wheel of Fortune) and their respective arena schedule.
More information on WoFs/WoF arenas here!
This is the official submission requirement list. Please read this carefully before submitting a variant to Variants World!
This is a video guide on how to use Variants World (https://variants.world), which was created by chess.com to host an archive of previously submitted positions and to also serve as a submission platform.
Once a variant has been reviewed, its verdict will be posted on the submission page, as well as on this thread linked above! There's a handy Q/A there as well, which will explain more on what the different results are.
Golden Variants
Golden Variants was started in 2021 as "Variant of the Week" and evolved into its current form in 2024. Want to know the most up-to-date information on how this weekly arena operates? These are some helpful threads!
This is the most recent Golden Variant announcement post, and shows the most recent voting format as well as information on how the arenas will operate.
This is a list of all variants that have been featured as a Golden Variant or Platinum Variant so far every week in 2025, along with arena dates and announcement posts from each month.
Creator Challenges
These started in 2025 with the creation of "Pocket Chess", a challenge where all variants participating had to fulfill certain variant design requirements. Want to see what influenced some of the variants submitted? Check out these challenges, made by the community!
Pocket Chess basic rules: Must have 6x6 board and use the RY color theme.
Historical Threads
You might hear references to things like "cgabot" and the "merge", or an important event, and you might have no idea what that's all about! These threads are historically important and can help explain past conventions.
https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/cgabot-2-0
https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/cgabot-3-0
cgabot was a program that utilized chess.com's forum API to sort and automatically format forum threads, and was active during 2021-2023 before being replaced by Variants World. These 3 information posts detail the 3 different versions of cgabot.
Variants World is the current submission platform used that only requires chess.com account authentication to access! It does a lot of stuff that cgabot used to do but faster and much more efficiently. These information posts detail changes made to the website.
https://www.chess.com/announcements/view/seeking-variant-testers-apply-here
https://www.chess.com/announcements/view/become-a-variant-tester-apply-here
NCV Testers are extensions of the CGA team and serve as helpers. Applications (like the ones listed above) are released every few months/years as members of the team fluctuate and as NCV Testers become CGAs.
The "merge" happened in 2022, and was the merging of 4 Player Chess with Variants. Many changes were made, which have been detailed above by a CGA.
A replacement of the traditional Holiday Hootenanny arena, Festive Fortune 2024 was the first ever prized event hosted by the modern Custom Variants club, and featured the WoF "Treehouse Battle" in a weeklong arena where the top 3 players earned a membership award.
This is a compilation of all of the variants (both WoFs and NCVs) accepted in 2024 by a CGA, along with some extra statistics and fun facts!
This is a list of all variants that were featured as a Golden Variant or Platinum Variant in 2024, along with the original arena dates as well as the announcement posts for each month.
Historical Threads (4 Player Chess Club)
Some important threads pertaining to custom variants were actually made prior to the creation of this club! These posts are a bit harder to track down, but here are the most notable ones!
This was the original thread used for submitting NCVs (then called New Custom Positions or NCPs), in a format similar to the Workshop thread currently in this club. Many of these variants no longer exist on the current Variants server, but a select few have remained!
This was the first ever prized event held related to WoFs by the CGA team. Sixty 24-minute WoF arenas were played on Fools' Day in 2024, with the player who won the most of these arenas winning a membership prize. Ironically, 3 CGAs came in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, and they offered the prize to the 4th place player.
Transparency/Progress Reports
The CGAs here at chess.com are all volunteers. Nonetheless, we wish to be as transparent as possible, show what our process is, and own up to our mistakes. These are some reports written by @ChessMasterGS (a CGA) which have been released periodically in 2023 and 2024.
July 13, 2023
August 11, 2023
November 26, 2023
March 4, 2024
July 1, 2024