Vote for May's Golden Variants (2025)!

Post for the previous month's vote:
https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/vote-for-aprils-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!

May is coming soon, and it's time for the month's Golden Variant vote again! After last month's Golden Variant post, we received 200+ votes and gained 1000+ members, all of whom I'd like to welcome to the club. Even as we have been inconsistent with getting variant "verdicts" out in the past few weeks, the club activity hopefully shows continued interest in our shared passion for variant creation!

Around 3 weeks ago, we announced the April 2025 update for the Variants server; if you haven't seen the announcement yet, please check that out. Starting this month, variants which were designated "hidden" after that update will start receiving some more dedicated attention in the Golden Variant cycle, which aligns with the original goal of Golden Variant and it's predecessor, Variant of the Week.

Also check out the announcement in the Variants club for the planned eventual move of all gamerule variants (excluding Bughouse, which will stay on the Live server, per Chess.com Staff) to the main Variants server. For any questions regarding this update, please write in the comments of the announcement; CGAs currently do not have involvement in this project and so we cannot answer your questions accurately.

To end things off again as usual for Golden Variant announcement posts, here's the current CGA stats for at the time of the writing of this post:

• There are currently 61 posts Under Review (UR)
• 32 (54.24%) of those posts are NCVs, and 29 (45.76%) of those posts are WoFs
• 10 of the currently UR posts were posted in the last 7 days
• The CGAs and NCV Testers have finished reviewing 4 variants in the last 7 days (sorry); in the last 14 days, they have finished reviewing 16 variants.

This month's format:

• 5 arenas, starting in May at 5 PM PST on Fridays / 0 UTC on Saturdays, including:
  • 1 "Golden Variant All Week" arena on May 2 of the winner of Vote #1, which is a vote between the variants Throne War Mini and Simplicity. This is the first reintroduction of FFA variants in the Golden Variant cycle since last year and so an All Week arena will be used.
  • 4 "Golden Variant" arenas of variants voted for below this post in Vote #2 and #3, to be scheduled on May 9, 16, 23, and 30.

Platinum Variant Q2 format reminder (+ corrections in italics):

• April marks the start of "Quarter 2" of the 2025 Golden Variant cycle. The 5 top performing variants in their arenas featured as Golden Variants from April and May will be selected as candidates for the "Platinum Variant" vote. 
• Platinum Variants are pinned to the top of their category's list for a few months, are featured in a weeklong arena with membership prizes (note: regular Golden Variants do not have membership prizes), and are recognized as one of the most popular creator-made variants on the server.
• See the current confirmed schedule for 2025 here: https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/2025-golden-variant-schedule

This month's voting process:

• Because last month's voting format using Chess.com's forum comment reactions have shown to be much more popular and accessible, we will continue to use them for future votes. For example:
• 
• The 3 comments below this post will be the voting platform; use designated reactions to vote for variants! You may vote for more than one variant!
• The winner of Vote #1 with the most votes will be selected, the 2 top variants out of the 5 options with the most votes in Vote #2, and the 2 top variants out of the 5 options with the most votes in Vote #3 will be selected for the Golden Variant arenas this month!
• The polling for Vote #1 ends on May 2, 0 UTC.
• The polling for Votes #2, #3 ends on May 9, 0 UTC.

Happy voting and may the best variants win!

Vote #1 (for May 2 / Week 20) - ENDED

Winner: Simplicity (FFA)

Vote count at 0 UTC on May 2nd:

Vote #2 (for May 9 + 16 / Weeks 20 + 21) - ENDED

Winner: Villagers Chess II

Runner-Up: Infiltration Danger

Vote count at 0 UTC on May 9th:

Vote #3 (for May 23 + 30 / Weeks 22 + 23) - ENDED

Winner: Ashtandrez

Runner-Up: Emperor's Tomb

Vote count at 0 UTC on May 9th:

first vote

fifth vote

(Can you also add how many UR submissions are pocket chess in the stats of this month?)

bro react

VOTE SIMPLICITY

VOTE SIMPLICITY

VOTE SIMPLICITY

*votes throne war mini*

jkjk

Thank god, btw, I played my first ever game of simplicity a few days back, and it's actually really fun!

first vote

I select first vote, but many player select second vote.

Stone Gravitation all the way.

IDK.

I'm new.

I jus like the name.

Simplicity be like

igs.

Who wants to play Stone Gravitation against me?

First vote