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That is indeed very surprising, since the number of active players are steadily decreasing up here. In Denmark they've lost about 250 active players every year for at least a decade and that figure is probably similar in Sweden too.

Norway has of course the Carlsen-effect and Iceland has a guaranteed salary for GMs (iirc about 1000 euro a month - but that figure is from before they crashed their economy).

I expected the Netherlands to have many GMs & Elo-players. An omission or do they really not qualify?

Smyslov_Fan wrote on 12/05/09 at 02:40:53:


Yes. I believe that Germany still has the most FIDE-rated players as well.

Whilst on the subject of statistics, how many Grandmasters are there in the world at present according to the current rating list?

Does Iceland still have the most GMs per capita?

To become a GM you have to have the ability to play in strong tournaments - and if there are no strong tournaments around your home you dont have that ability.

Africa is huge - how many strong tournaments are there at all?

Croatia, Russia, Germany ... they all have a very intense "chess infrastructure" with a lot of players and tournaments.

I suspect history might have something to say about this, too.  I don't think Russians are genetically predisposed towards chess ability.  And it would be interesting to know how many of those American GMs were born and spent their formative years elsewhere.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.  They're interesting to look at, but like MNb, I really don't think they reveal much without further qualification.

I think Russia should count as a European country, certainly in this department. Most of the people and most of the GMs live west of the Urals.

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Source: Wikipedia

It's interesting to compare these title statistics with actual competitive success. Germany has always struck me as a country that underperfoms in terms of team results and absolute top players. Some years ago Germany was even the country with the highest number of FIDE rated players. I don't know if that's still true, but there certainly is a lot of interest for the game there. Which means that for all their trainers, books and German thoroughness, they must be doing something wrong... Being a Western country isn't a good excuse either, since the Netherlands, France, and England all outperform them.

On the other hand, relatively small countries for example in the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia) are clearly getting better results than expected from their number of players and titles alone, suggesting a strong training system and cultural prestige for the game.