Just a curious question for some of those that have played a bunch of different games - do you find that you perform better or worse at one or the other?

My Diplomacy experience is rather limited, but no, I don't think my gaming performance has much at all to do with the variant at hand. The same basic skills are required in any Diplomacy variant.

I carefully study whatever scenario is thrown at me. Gaining a deeper understanding of the game's topography etc. is what's among the most fun aspects of playing Diplomacy. It's incidentally also the key to designing decent Diplomacy Variants, which I enjoy doing arguably at least as much as actually playing.

That being said, I have played only a very limited number of Standard Diplomacy games in my life. I'm a variant guy. Though I haven't played all that many variant games either - a function of playing at most two games at a time and not having been engaged in the hobby for a good number of years.

Anyway, for me, Standard is a bit of an irrelevance. The 1900 variant is imo the better "Standard". No other nation other than Germany remotely interests me in Standard, whereas I find all of 1900's powers sufficiently interesting.