vcs was a championship type tournament on chess.com that was mostly arenas
i think the times could totally overlap since most top atomic players that i know of are usually bunched in the same general area (like north america and central europe)
but yea thats true atomic doesnt have enough visibility to the public and i think the easiest way to fix that is for chess.com to just put a play variants button on homescreen or add atomic to the classic variants list (pretty much just the variants u can access on standard challenges like fischer random, 3+, koh, crazyhouse, bughouse, etc.)
its actually kind of rare that high rated players are all online on chess.com tho, usually its just 2 2100s and maybe a 2200-2300 at the same time
however i have seen around 5 leaderboard players online at the same time
also about the vcs thing i think there were at least 20 good players online at once but im pretty sure most ppl were ppl coming from lichess to try it lol
Also not sure if that statement is true: I think it's just that atomic doesn't have enough visibility in the eyes of the public chess.com. If it was promoted similarly to other variants like 3+ or Crazyhouse, I think there would be more than enough to make such an event. (Also, idk the demographic of the locations for atomic chess players, there might be some overlap ̄ \_(ツ)_/ ̄ )