Which is the world's biggest chess nation?

India, France Have FIDE Most Rated Players

India has just moved up to join France as the No. One ranked chess nation in terms of FIDE rated players. India rose to 35,200, and this number will be moving back and forth in the next few days until November when India is expected to be No. One.

Strangely, 35,200 is the same as France, the leader for over ten years. But India is growing steeply and France moderately. This had to happen. This week, one can expect India to surge ahead of the French number and never look back! Asia set to rule world chess.

About four decades back, India had just Manuel Aaron (above) on the rating list. People still remember him since his name was the first entry in the rating list for many decades. For many years he was the only Indian and later among the few Indians.

Since, Anand won the World Junior in 1987 (photo above) and then went on to became World Champion in Tehran 2000, the numbers tended to grow sharply. More players took to the game in the summer of 2001 and the progress kept growing.

Anand might be the primary cause for all this but the organisers, particularly, the All India Chess Federation did plenty of ground work. Rated events were organised all over the country and particularly more in the state of Tamil Nadu, Anand's home state.

In Europe, when Veselin Topalov emerged, Bulgaria's mobile networks supported elite events. In India it was even more basic. NIIT together with many state Governments supported school chess. On its part, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu went several steps ahead and cleared the way for chess in schools programme. Children in the age group 7-17 play chess in Tamil Nadu. Many states have chess in schools programme, but Tamil Nadu is one step ahead. They also practically implement it.

Two years back, India had overtaken the Germans and the Russians in the rating list. Earlier this year, the Indians went past Spain. Now, when experts were expecting India to get the better of France around March 2014, this sudden surge in the chess activity related to the world championship has helped India go past or equal France in October.

India's growth style is pyramid. The base is broad. A recent study related article in The Economist said more Indians play chess than any other nation. This number comes as no surprise. But that it came a few months ago needs to be analysed, since we might be observing a 2013 wave on the back of this Anand v Carlsen match, which could be several times bigger than the 2001 Anand wave after he won the world title in 2000.

The AICF and its administrators have laid a perfect platform for chess to grow in the land which invented the game. Our style will soon be copied by leading lights and European nations. Anand is in his final phase of preparation and not available to react to this good news. "It is all team effort," said V. Hariharan, Honorary Secretary of the All India Chess Federation while reacting to this news. "This is great news," said Bharat Singh, CEO of the AICF. D.V. Sundar, Vice President of FIDE was delighted about the timing of this achievement as India is making the final touches to the organising of the Anand v Carlsen match from Nov 7-28.

AICF Press Release – 28.10.2013

Chess Statistics 2012

Last year Boris Schipkov has taken a closer look at the January 2012 FIDE Rating List and come up with some interesting stats. There were at the time 133,549 players in the list, with an average rating of 1953.7. The greatest number of rated chess players live in (would you have guessed?) Germany – 15,442. The great chess nation Russia has 14,422 players with international ratings.

Number of internationally rated players

Schipkov has examined the trend in the last four years and tracked the increase in the number of players. The greatest increase was in Spain, with 5153 new rated players, followed by India, France, Russia and Germany.

Increase in the number of rated players

Players from China now have the highest average rating – 2193.39. Players from Indonesia have the second highest average rating – 2163.53. Schpkov only took into consideration countries with more than 100 rated players. You should note that the general decrease in the average ratings is to be expected, as large numbers of new players join the lists. As beginners they are inevitably at the bottom of the ratings lists.

Average ratings of the rated players

The largest number of titled players – grandmasters, International Masters and FIDE Masters – live in Russia. In second place is Ukraine, in third Germany. Here are the number of GMs and their average ratings.

Titled players

Source: Chess Siberia