Does playing chess variants (Horde, 3 check, ...) improve standard chess skills?

#9
I don't agree, this depends from player to player.
Many variants will help a bit. Playing standard will definitely help much more, but even variants can have positive effects.
Just take Three-check as an example, a variant I play somewhat regularly. You can still learn some attacking ideas from it which are far more deadly in three-check but can still be useful in standard chess. Even calculation can be improved quite a lot and knight maneuvering which can be essential in successfully giving three checks to the king.
I believe one of the top three-check players, Gavity, would agree with me on this one. His standard ratings skyrocketed after getting extremely good at three-check.

https://lichess.org/forum/general-chess-discussion/playing-variants-makes-you-weaker?page=6#54

Playing a lot of crazyhouse last year has only made me much stronger. I can get the entire position in my head and start calculating much faster after ZH 1/2+0 game spam on lichess throughout the last year.

3 Check weakens my standard chess play. It's only temporary, but it's noticeable enough that I stopped playing 3 Check.

Don’t think so.

@ICWiener
No expect Chess960. All other variants have particular aim to win the game so they have different strategies from standard and hence cannot help in improving standard. But since Chess960 has no specific rules, only the pieces are oriented randomly, the thing is same as standard.

You could try to play more Fischer random chess (known as Chess960).

If you achieve an improvement in your game of Chess960, then you will get an improvement in your skills in Standard chess. With Chess960 you will get more various and interesting openings, middlegames and endings, some of which are rare in standard chess, but useful. But anyway, you need to play more long games in order to be able to think and develop your understanding of chess. I don’t believe that quick games in any variant will help in understanding chess.