P.S.: I forgot to mention this in the main post, but the Platinum Variant event will have PRIZES!!!
1st Place (1 month of 
diamond membership): @wolyn
2nd Place (1 month of 
platinum membership): @hutianmin1
3rd Place (1 month of 
gold membership): @Trinhnguyenbinh15
(To prevent abuse, players are only eligible for a prize if their account was made prior to March 26; background checks may be run)
P.S.: I forgot to mention this in the main post, but the Platinum Variant event will have PRIZES!!!
1st Place (1 month of diamond membership): TBD Winner
2nd Place (1 month of platinum membership): TBD Winner
3rd Place (1 month of gold membership): TBD Winner
(To prevent abuse, players are only eligible for a prize if their account was made prior to March 26; background checks may be run)
what does a background check mean here?
mine is petcv ppl, what's yours
P.S.: I forgot to mention this in the main post, but the Platinum Variant event will have PRIZES!!!
1st Place (1 month of diamond membership): TBD Winner
2nd Place (1 month of platinum membership): TBD Winner
3rd Place (1 month of gold membership): TBD Winner
(To prevent abuse, players are only eligible for a prize if their account was made prior to March 26; background checks may be run)
what does a background check mean here?
checking the validity of your account
the variants shall speak for themselves :D
=(
minihouse is the best variant to exist, you can never prove me wrong
Cross Derby essentially attracts everyone who likes Knights (which is a lot of people)
Also only players who have played at least one game of each variant should be allowed to vote
Also only players who have played at least one game of each variant should be allowed to vote
dude then i can't vote (if you exclude testing games of Phantom Rooks played with NoWellOkay)
The results are in!
Thank you to everyone who voted this month! The arena will be scheduled shortly to start on March 28, and of course will have the membership prizes as mentioned above. We'll be back at it shortly to vote for April's variants.
Well, these speculations are why I have practically stoped variant creation.
Honestly this whole place is rigged. CGA variant creators get special treatment. Like this rigged voting system, or pestilence's conquest getting tested and accepted ahead of 50 other variants previously submitted...
CGA variants do not get special treatment. It just so happens that we submit so infrequently that a single acceptance is enough to spark controversies such as this. I feel like this statement is targeted toward me specifically, so I'll speak for myself here. The Pestilence's Conquest is my first submission in over 2 years, my second submission as a CGA, and my third ever submission throughout my time on variants.
There were, of course, periods in the past with a ton of CGA submissions, but the majority of them were declined for complex issues that were solved in later revisions. In fact, the last time a member of the CGA team (including NCV Testers) submitted a variant was a month ago, and it was declined (Yakuhana by Dan-kyu).
Meanwhile, someone like icp, who probably has more submissions than the entire team combined (I counted 36), will of course have many more declined (and accepted) variants than any one of us. That's just how the statistics works out. You, Coool, have submitted upwards of 30 variants.
Having reviewed hundreds, even thousands of other variants myself, it is not unlikely I or other CGAs would know better than the average variant creator. After all, it is my job to make fair and accurate decisions on custom variants, and the CGA position is one I earned after almost five years of involvement in the variants community, and over three of reviewing submissions and working with other renowned creators.
The CGAs are trained to analyze submissions in ways you creators might not have thought about, and we have documented procedures to make sure submissions are up to standards. The bar naturally has risen over the years, so of course CGAs are going to update themselves to meet those standards.
What I don't get is how my variant getting accepted in 12 days, or whatever it was, suddenly means that the entire CGA team rigs verdicts. I don't usually say this often, but this is a ??? moment for me. It is incredibly frustrating when we volunteer (we aren't paid, by the way!) to do this work for you all to make this place friendly and fair, and in return we get accused of doing something that goes completely against our mission.
I'm not complaining—in fact, it's a very good thing—that we have so many more submissions today when compared to, say, a year ago. But just think about it: if there are this many submissions, we simply can't keep up. We are going to get rid of the ones we 100% know are bad and accept the ones we 100% know are good to reduce the workload for us. As I've said before, if you want efficiency, you will have to sacrifice quality, and vice versa. Maybe other variants would receive a quicker and more accurate verdict if there weren't so many submissions every week. Please remember that the CGA team is composed of fellow enthusiasts just like you, fellow humans that have school, work, and other daily obligations to attend to.
I've already said before that if you have questions or concerns about the process, talk to us. Complaining about what you think is "rigged" in public is only adding fuel to a fire that wouldn't exist if you had put it out the previous night.
As for the "rigging" of the voting, that's something you'll have to take up with GS, since I'm not all that familiar with the new Golden Variant system.
Post for the previous month's vote:
https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/vote-for-februarys-golden-variants-2025
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 start of the bold text if you want to know how to vote without reading my entire post 😀)
Hello Custom Variants community!
You might be wondering why this post is coming out so late, or what's going on with Platinum Variant, but fear not, since that's exactly what this post is about! The wait is finally over for the "Q1" vote as we await which variant will join Minihouse, Ambush, and Saturn's Rings as one of the most coveted community-made variants on the Variants server (psssst, prizes are available, you don't have to click off this post yet).
Before getting into that though, here's the monthly variant review stats/fun facts panel, with all the numerical data you could've ever hoped for from a chess custom variants club:
Thank you to everyone for bearing with us and being patient even when things have seemingly gotten slower recently (see @JkCheeseChess' message in the VVF here)! If you ever have any questions on the review process, please don't hesitate to reach out to a CGA.
Now that that's out of the way, let's start with the changes being made to Golden Variant's format for this month!
See the full 2025 schedule as it is updated here:
https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/2025-golden-variant-schedule
This month's format:
What you're voting for:
Selected WoFs:
What is Platinum Variant?
What are the candidates for this month?
This quarter, the candidates are (in no particular order):
The voting process:
StrawPoll Link:
https://strawpoll.com/61gD92oXaZw
Happy voting and may the best variant win!