Vote for January's Golden Variants (2025)!

Post from the vote in December:

https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/vote-for-decembers-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!

It's late as I'm writing this, but just wanted to get this out ahead of time since I've reorganized the tentative schedule for the coming year of 2025! There's a lot of information packed below so do read it if you're interested in how things will go this year, I promise it's worth your time (even if there's large blocks of scary paragraphs)!

First on the agenda: so far, the plan is to have Platinum Variant arenas on (in Month/Day form) 3/28, 6/27, 9/26, and 12/26, with each arena representing a different quarter of the year. There's talk of making a change to trimesters instead, but so far this system should work and make sure the best variants are properly represented. Also: prizes might make an appearance?? 💎

Secondly, I've been looking at the feedback form responses, and we'll definitely try out some new stuff this year! I may start reaching out to some of y'all who provided usernames so the CGA team can get some more insights! If you're reading this before the new year, the form will still be open until then so definitely fill it out if you're interested. We're particularly concerned with the effectiveness of Golden Variant in helping variants in the long-term and not just over the course of a week or so.

Next, there's been concern about the sudden acceptance of 3 NCVs in the past month or so that has queued all of them up for an All Week arena appearance. To make it so that we're not going to just have 3 out of the 5 slots in January be filled with All Week arenas in a row, I've spread them out 3 weeks apart from each other in the order that they were accepted. This is not the most ideal solution, but hopefully this will be to the benefit of all of them!

(Please submit more WoFs it takes us forever to test NCVs 😢)

Just to feature something more prominently, I'd also like to take this moment to congratulate NCV Tester @BN1208 on being promoted to CGA! We promise to get your role on the variants server soon enough so you can be assigned WoF scheduling duty 😈

Lastly, let's just get some basic stats and updates on variant testing currently:

• Dead piece render bug FIXED!
• 16 variants Under Review (UR)
• 11 variants reviewed in the last 7 days
• Oldest currently UR variant is https://variants.world/posts/796
• No variants Pending Reply (PR)

With all that out of the way, let's start going over the voting procedure for this month! (It will be very chaotic but bear with me on this one)

In case you missed my hyperlink above...

See the schedule here:

https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/2025-golden-variant-schedule

This month's format:

• Five arenas, starting in January at 4 PM PST on Fridays (12 AM UTC on Saturdays)
• "Regular" Golden Variant arenas will be 72 hours long
• "All Week" Golden Variant arenas will be 168 hours (1 week) long

What you're voting for:

• Week 1 (January 3) has been predetermined and will be an All Week arena of Sergeant's Checkers II (the oldest of the recently accepted NCVs)
• Week 2 (January 10) will be a Golden Variant arena of the winner of the StrawPoll
• Week 3 (January 17) will be a Golden Variant arena of 2nd place of the StrawPoll
• Week 4 (January 24) will be a Golden Variant arena of 3rd place of the StrawPoll
• Week 5 (January 31) has been predetermined and will be an All Week arena of Acheron (the second oldest of the recently accepted NCVs)

The voting process:

• 1 StrawPoll
• The StrawPoll will not have any listed options unlike the ranked-choice voting traditionally used.
• Any variant that is NOT in Most Popular, 2P Featured, 4P Featured, 4P Giveaway (Antichess), or Common can be listed as a write-in option. (In other words, select variants from Extra, FFA, and Teams sections)
• Platinum Variants from 2024 are also ineligible for time being, as well as Acheron, Phantom Rooks, and Sergeant's Checkers II
• Each user can submit 3 selections, with each vote having equal weight.
• The top 3 variants in the write-in will be selected for Weeks 2, 3, and 4.
• The StrawPoll will close on January 8 at 4 PM PST (January 9 at 12 AM UTC)

StrawPoll Link:

https://strawpoll.com/LVyK2DexkZ0

Happy voting!

If there's anything I missed, was unclear about, or sleepishly made a grammar mistake in please let me know 😅

should I submit more wofs

like 3:1 wof to ncv ratio

Please do, you're better at making WoFs than you think you are lol

Hmm... Rookmate seems fun...

I wonder who made that variant...

So you're telling me that it was not made by the CGA team and put in the Common section? I gotta check my variants knowledge.

Eyes of Horus

Wow! There is very high diversity in selections. Almost no repeat variants.

Okay...?

I should've voted for Every End. Why did I vote for Unique instead of that.

Final Results (only variants with 5+ votes are displayed below):

1. The Lake (9 - TIE)
2. Explosive Magic (9 - TIE)
3. Cross Derby (8)
4. Sergeant's Checkers (7)
5. Counterturn (6)
6. Rookmate (5)

January schedule has also been updated! Congrats to the winners.

NIIIIIIIIIIIIIICE