Why are there less Crazyhouse Arenas YET AGAIN??

Because KOTH (which was missing) was added to the rotation after github.com/ornicar/lila/issues/8775
Relevant commit: github.com/ornicar/lila/commit/0e427719c95c6f335f9efb865950953b6b3490b2

I recommend you or someone else makes a github issue (probably also link back to the forum here) trying to explain what sort of schedule you guys want. In terms of Time Controls and frequency etc.

Done github.com/ornicar/lila/issues/8925

It's a hassle as a player even. When I want to play zh I want to be able to go view tournaments on mobile and just play whatever hour of the day it is. I don't think I would go into a calendar to find custom-made tournaments unless they were "special" in some way. Tournaments were a great way of playing random opps at a set time control without seeking and that is how I tend to use lichess.

This respect for variants having zh tournaments every hour reinforces lichess as the natural home of variants players. It's a USP that is unmatched by any other chess website.

We need variants to be respected here on lichess as the chess community more broadly can sometimes be hostile to variants as being "not proper chess". By respecting them, it helps give them legitimacy as just as valuable as the original game.

I wouldn't go to a calendar either, but if I join a lichess team and the arena is organized from that team I see no hassle as a player. Lichess teams are a great tool to organize arenas for a community IMHO.

About respect/disrespect I think lichess has always shown great respect for its variants (not just with arenas but also limiting them to a closed narrow set, integrating analysis board and studies and SF with all of them, rankings and trophies, etc). Of course there are many discussions and opinions around variants and I don't think there's a perfect balance to make everybody happy. I applaud any "political" discussion when the community feels disrespected, but I just want to play :-)

With regards to the decrease in zh arenas, I want to voice my agreement with many in the zh community. Like them, I am frustrated and discouraged by the change. For me, I'm especially disappointed in the lack of variety of time controls in the new system. In the past, my favorite were the 4+2 arenas. Now, the only increment zh arena is the 3+2 shield and that is only monthly. This is curious to me as 3+2 seems to be the "standard time control" for zh and is currently used as the time control for the cwc.

With regards to community arenas, I'd participate if they happen. However, I feel like the difficulty is being underestimated. Just making an arena every hour is time consuming. There is currently no functionality to make recurring arenas (although maybe this would be possible with a custom script?)

In the end, I'd advocate for more zh arenas with a variety of time controls, especially with increment.

As a Crazyhouse lover, I can't agree less with what has been said on this thread. I want to believe that Lichess have their reasons for the reduction of ZH Arena. But it would be nice to have an explanation than keep us in the dark. @pepellou some 2-3years ago, when you create an arena, it is visible to the public, but Lichess also took that away from us, by making a private tournament visible to only those who have the link.
A solution to the issue as a whole will be to allow private Arenas visible to everyone, then we can create the Arenas ourselves. @thefinnisher has been doing a good job on this, but it would be better if the tournaments are seen in the public Arena.

I really hope Lichess does something about this.

People could use arenas for publicity and spam arenas to get free publicity for their groups on the website. Also there were just too many arenas created.

I have an idea though! Each player on lichess could have the right to create one tournament per week which is publicly visible for at most one of the teams they run.

However, we still need hourly zh arenas. That and JannLee streams is how I got into crazyhouse. The advantage of a tournament is that you get games without having to interact with anyone specific.

#11 is correct; feedback entered on GitHub will be considered.

(It's not that I disagree with improving the official schedule - far from it - but developer attention is split across GitHub, Discord, and the feedback forum so entering constructive feedback in GitHub is more likely to be considered than anything else.)

I collected data for 3 years on the annual tournaments held in all variants on lichess.
Judging by this, zh is one of the fastest growing options and I do not understand why reduce the number of tournaments if the number of players involved is growing on a par with blitz?



I can collect statistics in more detail if needed.