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In 1993 Nigel Short won the Candidates Tournament, defeating former world champion Anatoly Karpov and then Jan Timman, and thus earning the right to challenge Garry Kasparov for the world title.
Before the World Championship match Kasparov and Short split with FIDE, accusing the organization of lack of professionalism, corruption, and not consulting players on key decisions. Together they established the Professional Chess Association (PCA) to organize the World Championship match independent of FIDE. The Times of London agreed to sponsor the event, which was staged in the Savoy Theatre in London. There were no other major sponsors.
In 1993 the American lawyer, entrepreneur, and chess organizer Bob Rice was appointed the first Commissioner of the PCA. His task was to oversee its operations, organize events, and secure new sponsorships. He began discussions with Intel on that matter.
That's where I come in: Bob sought my assistance in recruiting Intel as a sponsor. One of my tasks was to put together statistics on chess, which I did, together with the news magazine Der Spiegel. And those 1993 statistics are the main subject of today's article.
It all worked out well. Intel provided significant financial backing for the PCA, with a two-year contract and millions in sponsorship for events. It ran the PCA world championship cycle, including an Interzonal tournament and Candidates matches, which ended with Kasparov defending his title against Viswanathan Anand in New York in 1995.
Here is an extract of the statistics – much of it quoting from the documents we submitted to Intel at the time:
There are an estimated 500,000,000 (half a billion) people in the world who can play chess. Of these, six million are organized in chess clubs, which are members of 131 national chess federations.
"Rated players" are international tournament players who have achieved a rating computed by the World Chess Federation FIDE and/or the Professional Chess Association PCA. The lowest rating is Elo 2000, which is very strong club level. It should be remembered that the players on the Elo list represent less than one hundredth of one percent of all chess players.
The total number of rated players is 15,139. Of these there are
| 15139 | higher than Elo 2000 | Top club level |
| 13777 | higher than Elo 2100 | International tournament players |
| 11057 | higher than Elo 2200 | Masters |
| 4703 | higher than Elo 2300 | Strongest international players |
| 1490 | higher than Elo 2400 | International Masters |
| 378 | higher than Elo 2500 | Grandmasters |
| 59 | higher than Elo 2600 | Super-Grandmasters |
| 8 | higher than Elo 2700 | Super-Grandmasters |
| 1 | higher than Elo 2800 | Garry Kasparov |
There have been less Grandmaster titles awarded in the history of chess than Nobel prizes in this century, or doctorates at one major University in the course of a year. Many tens of thousands of books have been published on chess, and there are currently almost 200 regular magazines and periodicals on the subject.
In the reunified Germany there are an estimated 17 million people who can play chess and occasionally do so. 100,000 are organized in chess clubs, of which there are almost 3000 in the country. The members take part regularly in the club activities, pay dues and are members of the German Chess Federation, which is the second largest in the world.
Statistics for the East German clubs are not yet available, but are probably similar to those for Western German clubs. The following statistics were obtained in 1990, the next census for the whole country is expected to be conducted in summer 1995.
| Age groups | male | female | together |
| up to 6 years | 15 | 6 | 21 |
| 7 to 14 years | 4,586 | 829 | 5,415 |
| 15 to 18 years | 7,861 | 688 | 8,549 |
| 19 to 21 years | 7,138 | 378 | 7,516 |
| 22 to 35 years | 27,918 | 879 | 28,797 |
| 36 to 50 years | 16,308 | 387 | 16,695 |
| 51 to 60 years | 10,128 | 192 | 10,320 |
| over 60 years | 8,729 | 222 | 8,951 |
| Total | 82,683 | 3,581 | 86,264 |
Assuming that the above numbers reflect the distribution among the general chess public, then in Germany there are over seven million chess players between 19 and 35 years of age, and five million between 36 and 60 years. Germany has the largest number of rated chess players of any country in the world.
And here are scans of some visuals we supplied:
That's what the chess world was like, back in 1993. In a second instalment, we will look at the development of these numbers over the last thirty-two years. If you wish to comment, please use the feedback section below, or this feedback link (for substantial observations which we can include in part two).
Thirteen Super Grandmasters!
This is an article I wrote in 1983, as a rookie chess journalist. In it I celebrated the title of "Super Grandmasters" – players who were rated 2600 or higher! There were 13 such players, led by World Champion Anatoly Karpov, with a young upstart named Garry Kasparov hard at his heels.
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