Chess Statistics Today

by Frederic Friedel
6/12/2025 – In our previous article on historical chess statistics we showed you the number of rated players there were in 1993, their ages, ratings, and where they came from. Today we compare them with the current FIDE statistics, showing how things have developed in the three decades that have passed. Our report also contains a little puzzle for you to mull over – why does the chess superpower China have so few rated players?
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1.6 million players

The current FIDE ratings list 1,643,067 players. Of these 502,209 are in the "standard" rating list, the total of 1.6 million include rapid and blitz ratings.

As of May 2025, the number of FIDE-rated chess players by country is as follows (rounded to the nearest hundred):

  1. Russia: 34,800 rated players
  2. India: 32,500 rated players
  3. Germany: 26,500 rated players
  4. Spain: 24,800 rated players
  5. France: 23,400 rated players

These five countries have the largest number of FIDE-rated players by a significant margin.

A little puzzle

China, despite being one of the chess superpowers in terms of elite player strength, has a much smaller base of rated players compared to the above countries. Despite its population (1.4 billion) China has only about 658 active FIDE rated players, ranking it 46th globally. But it is considered a chess superpower, due to the exceptional strength of its elite players. For example, China is third globally in the average rating of its top ten players, ahead of countries with much larger pools of rated players, such as Germany and Ukraine.

The other rising chess superpower, India, has a vastly greater base of rated tournament players – and a higher average rating of the top ten players. Which brings us to a little quiz question:

Why does India, which has almost exactly the same population base as China, have over 32,000 active players, while China only has just 658? There is a very simple reason for this. Think about it – the answer is given at the end of this article.

Number of grandmasters

In 1993 we counted 524 grandmasters world-wide. This year FIDE has reported that the number has climbed to between 1,730 and 1,800. Of these, around 700 to 1000 are active – which means they take part in tournaments and have maintained a rating above the GM threshold.

If you have a ChessBase account, you can check the details of all the FIDE rated players by clicking "Players" on the right of the news page, or by going directly to

https://players.chessbase.com.

There you can search for any player in the list FIDE list and learn all the salient details on this player: his or her age, Elo progress over the years, performance with white and black, favourite openings, weaknesses, etc. You even get a series of pictures and a list of key games to replay.

The following table shows you the ten countries with the highest numbers of grandmasters. Here are the numbers of GMs in the top countries, and how they increased in 32 years. The final column shows you the average ratings of the top ten GMs:

Country 1993 2025 Avg. Top 10
Russia 91 >210 2657
United States 40 106 2728
Germany 34 96 2633
Ukraine 29 89 2630
India 2 75 2727
Spain 8 57 2618
France 6 54 2626
Jug. Serbia (33) 52 2570
Hungary 30 51 2626
Poland 8 50 2595

Russia was and remains the country with the largest number of grandmasters worldwide. The number of GMs in the US grew considerably, when grandmasters from other countries (e.g. Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So, Levon Aronian)  joined the federation.

The most dramatic growth has taken place in India, which progressed from two (Anand and Barua) to 86, with twelve in the top 120 in the world, and three in the top ten – including reigning world champion Gukesh. 

Germany has 30 to 40 GMs, with four (Vincent Keymer, Frederik Svane, Matthias Bluebaum, Rasmus Svane) listed in the top 100 in the world. 

Top Players

Let us compare the ratings of the top thirty player from 32 years ago with the ratings today.

2025 1993
1 Carlsen, Magnus NOR 2837 Kasparov, Gary  RUS 2805
2 Nakamura, Hikaru USA 2804 Fischer, Robert J  USA 2780
3 Gukesh D IND 2787 Karpov, Anatoly   RUS 2725
4 Erigaisi Arjun IND 2782 Anand, Viswanathan  IND 2710
5 Caruana, Fabiano USA 2776 Ivanchuk, Vassily  UKR 2710
6 Abdusattorov, Nodirbek UZB 2771 Gelfand, Boris  BLR 2690
7 Praggnanandhaa R IND 2758 Kramnik, Vladimir  RUS 2685
8 Wei, Yi CHN 2758 Shirov, Alexei  ESP 2670
9 Firouzja, Alireza FRA 2757  Bareev, Evgeny  RUS 2670
10 Nepomniachtchi, Ian RUS 2757 Georgiev, Kiril  BUL 2660
11 So, Wesley USA 2751 Salov, Valery  RUS 2660
12 Aravindh, Chithambaram VR. IND 2749 Azmaiparashvili, Zurab  GEO 2655
13 Aronian, Levon USA 2747 Short, Nigel D  ENG 2655
14 Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar AZE 2746 Kamsky, Gata  USA 2655
15 Anand, Viswanathan IND 2743 Lautier, Joel  FRA 2645
16 Duda, Jan-Krzysztof POL 2739 Jussupow, Artur  GER 2645
17 Fedoseev, Vladimir SLO 2739 Sokolov, Ivan  BIH 2640
18 Giri, Anish NED 2738 Topalov, Veselin  BUL 2635
19 Dominguez Perez, Leinier USA 2738 Timman, Jan H  NED 2635
20 Niemann, Hans Moke USA 2736 Polugaevsky, Lev  RUS 2635
21 Ding, Liren CHN 2734 Adams, Michael  ENG 2630
22 Le, Quang Liem VIE 2729 Agdestein, Simen  NOR 2630
23 Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime FRA 2723 Khalifman, Alexander  RUS 2630
24 Rapport, Richard HUN 2722 Nikolic, Predrag  BIH 2630
25 Keymer, Vincent GER 2720 Hjartarson, Johann  ISL 2625
26 Vidit, Santosh Gujrathi IND 2720 Andersson, Ulf  SWE 2625
27 Topalov, Veselin BUL 2717 Gulko, Boris F  USA 2625
28 Yu, Yangyi CHN 2714 Ehlvest, Jaan  EST 2625
29 Harikrishna, Pentala IND 2707 Dautov, Rustem  GER 2625
30 Maghsoodloo, Parham IRI 2706 Kaidanov, Gregory S USA  2620

We see that the average of the top 30 today is 2747. In 1993 it was 2661.

The average rating of the top 100 chess players in the world in May 2025 was Elo 2667. The entire FIDE top 100 list is without a single female player, with Hou Yifan, 2633, occupying place 102. But good news: the Live Chess Ratings of May 30 she has climbed to place 100. She did this without playing any games and gaining any rating points. It was the result of higher-ranked players descending to a spot below her.

Here's the average ratings of the genders:

Top 10 men  = 2779   vs   Top 10 women  = 2548
Top 20 men  = 2761   vs   Top 20 women  = 2514
Top 50 men  = 2723   vs   Top 50 women  = 2455
Top 100 men = 2687   vs   Top 100 women = 2411

There is a lot more statistical data mining to be done, and you can expect more articles to follow. If you wish to contribute, please use this feedback link.

Riddle

The reason why China has so few active chess players can be expressed in one word: Xiangqi (象棋, pronounced "shiang-chee"). There is a rival game! It is the most popular board game in China. It has been estimated that there are 1.2 billion people throughout the country who have at least occasionally played the game. If you see people playing in parks or the street side, it will be Xiangqi, in India it will be classical chess. Young people who become interested in strategic board games in India will learn and play chess, in China Xiangqi.

A similar question would be: why are there so much fewer baseball players in India than in the US? There is a similar one-word answer: cricket!

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Editor-in-Chief emeritus of the ChessBase News page. Studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and Oxford, graduating with a thesis on speech act theory and moral language. He started a university career but switched to science journalism, producing documentaries for German TV. In 1986 he co-founded ChessBase.
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Discuss

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arzi arzi 6/16/2025 08:32
ThomasDalton:"...so everything is FIDE rated."

This is not correct. It is in Finland like in USA with USCF and FIDE rating, two different rating system. For example I do have SELO and ELO rating and they are not the same number.
ThomasDalton ThomasDalton 6/16/2025 08:00
Arzi, you need to read my comment again. You quoted it, but didn't read it.
arzi arzi 6/16/2025 06:27
ThomasDalton:"In Europe, people do care about their FIDE ratings, because even low-rated players play in tournaments in other countries, so everything is FIDE rated."

That is not a correct statement. In Europe they DO have also local ratings, at least in Finland, for example. In Finland they have SELO and it means Finnish ELO in classical time format. It is NOT the real Elo run by the Fide. Finland has also Pelo in blitz. The most of the tournaments in Finland are rated by the Selo, not by the Elo, but they do have also ELO tournaments in Finland.
ThomasDalton ThomasDalton 6/15/2025 07:40
India only introduced its own rating system last year, so before then if you wanted your tournament to be rated it had to be rated with FIDE. One of the concerns expressed when they started their own ratings was that it would reduce the number of FIDE rated tournaments. I don't know if that's happened.
Frederic Frederic 6/15/2025 10:52
@ThomasDalton: ...and the reason why such a large number of players are FIDE rated in India, and why so many have reached the ratings summit.
ThomasDalton ThomasDalton 6/15/2025 05:54
I don't know about China, but I think American tournament organisers are just cheap! It costs money to get a tournament rated by both USCF and FIDE and low-rated players don't particularly care about FIDE, so they save some money by only registering the low-rated tournaments with USCF. In Europe, people do care about their FIDE ratings, because even low-rated players play in tournaments in other countries, so everything is FIDE rated.
Frederic Frederic 6/14/2025 09:43
Thanks for the useful comments, ThomasDalton. The puzzle remains: WHY do some countries have so few rated player, why so few rated tournaments? And why does is India in such a chess boom. One reason could be: they no longer have 30,000 gods, but 30,002. But then why doesn't something like that apply to China, who have or had World Champions in both gender categories? Why didn't Yifan and Ding have the same effect as Anand and Gukesh?
ThomasDalton ThomasDalton 6/13/2025 06:40
There are lots of countries that don't have many chess players. Just as there are lots of countries that don't play baseball. It's not because they have another very similar game. They just don't play chess/baseball. Brazil only has 2,826 active FIDE rated players despite a population of 211 million. Nigeria only has 405 players out of a population of 228 million. Large countries not having many players is not unusual.

What's unusual about China is the absence of low-rated players. They have 1,125 active rated players (I'm not sure where you got 658 from). Roughly 19% are rated over 2000, compared with only 9% in France and 4% in India. In the US, it's 17% (762 over 2000 out of 4,529 total, out of a population of 340 million).

So I stand by my explanation that the explanation is the same in China and the US - they don't have many FIDE rated tournaments. Wikipedia says the Chinese Chess Federation has 300,000 members. USCF has 100,000. Plenty of people play chess in both countries, but only the top players play in FIDE rated tournaments.
Frederic Frederic 6/13/2025 03:32
@Frits Fritschy: There is a vastly greater reservoir of active, FIDE rated player in India than in China. That cannot be disputed. The quiz question was why this was the case. The answer: xiangqi. Similar to why there are so few baseball players in India. Answer: cricket. The separate question is why there are a disproportionate number of world-class players in China. It must indeed be the special government programs that squeeze top level success by vigorously fostering any special talent that is spotted.
arzi arzi 6/13/2025 02:08
FF: "the Chinese government wants to show the Chinese can do as good or better as the West also in chess and has set up special programs to squeeze out every talent from a reservoir of selected children."

This could be the reason why China does not have as many players as others. If, for example, in Chinese schools and homes the majority of children play xiangqi, very few of them choose the chess we know. The state can, of course, provide financial support and good coaches for those few children who play the chess and are talented at it. How ever, Fide rating tournaments are also needed to get players with rating. In this case too, the Chinese government can help by sending talented young people to play tournaments abroad, at the goverment's expense, of course.
Frits Fritschy Frits Fritschy 6/13/2025 10:06
That's hardly an explanation, it's just restating the problem. If no one is playing chess in China, how is it possible that there are so many top players? In other countries, there is a big reservoir of lower rated players from which talents will come up regularly - and they will put time and effort in it because they follow in the footsteps of others.
I can only think of two explanations:
-there are many players that should have a rating but maybe the Chinese federation doesn't care too much about keeping track with it;
- the Chinese government wants to show the Chinese can do as good or better as the West also in chess and has set up special programs to squeeze out every talent from a reservoir of selected children.
Frederic Frederic 6/13/2025 08:02
@arzi: You got it! I have added a few details.
ThomasDalton ThomasDalton 6/12/2025 08:09
I can't think of a single word to explain China's lack of players. I would have thought the explanation was the same as for the US, which is also noticeably absent from the top 5 - a lack of FIDE rated tournaments. There are plenty of chess players, but they don't play in FIDE rated tournaments, because there aren't any for them to play in, so they don't have FIDE ratings.
Frits_Fritschy Frits_Fritschy 6/12/2025 05:38
Steve, on top of what you wrote, Nakamura certainly wasn't a GM at the age of two ('... grandmasters from other countries joined the federation'). So you are right.
Caruana however wasn't a GM when he moved to the Italian federation. So, he was an Italian GM and Frederic was right in this case.
Steve Higgins Steve Higgins 6/12/2025 03:15
While Fabiano Caruana was living in Hungary at the time he gained his final GM norm, he was born in Miami Fla and grew up in New York City. It is misleading to characterize him as a foreign-born player who emigrated to the U.S. Less clearly, Hikaru Nakamura moved to the U.S. from Japan at the age of two, was born with dual U.S.-Japanese citizenship, and grew up entirely within the U.S. Why do these things keep getting repeated? These are U.S. players, not people who relocated to the U.S. from another homeland as adults.
arzi arzi 6/12/2025 02:37
Maybe the majority of Chinese people play Chinese chess (xiangqi)?
IntensityInsanity IntensityInsanity 6/12/2025 12:50
Lovely article, always enjoy these. A couple of corrections, however. First, the following partial sentence in the article, "..when grandmasters from other countries joined the federation (e.g. Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Wesley So, Levon Aronian)."

Nakamura should not be on this list at all. Caruana maybe shouldn't be as he switched from US to Italy and then back to US but again, not same case as So or Aronian.

Regarding the 1993 Rating list with Fischer as#2: This is not really fair. Fischer was no more #2 on FIDE rating lists in the 90's then he is now. He was inactive then and did not appear on such lists and should therefore be removed from this article's 1993 list and not count toward any averages.
Frederic Frederic 6/12/2025 11:55
Sorry, Frits Fritschy, I will give the answer in a few days. Actually the short answer is a single word, which will cause most readers to go "Yes, of course!!"
Frits Fritschy Frits Fritschy 6/12/2025 09:54
'The answer is givenn at the end of this article'. What has Hou Yifan to do with China having only 658 rated players...?
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