Originally posted by dfm65well, it was dissolved 1991, 15 years ago.
But where is the USSR today?
but russia alone is pretty far ahead of usa it seems. all former soviet states do well. especially ukraine, with only 50 million polulation against usa's 300 million. that makes ukraine 6 times more dense with high leverl players compared to usa.
FIDE stats:
country avg GMs IMs #titled
1 Russia 2716 156 415 1588
2 Ukraine 2663 53 167 326
3 USA 2625 59 99 455
edit: well, it seems russia also has 6x more high level players than usa, taking into account the 150 million population.
i tell you what is the most popular game on the planet. from a sample of internet cafe taken over three continents and eastern europe.
it is that game where the players run around shooting each other/terrorists, sometimes in teams, sometimes as a single player game. try playing chess in an internet cafe where they have teams, the screaming/noise is someting out of this world. the game is characterised by the often reaped verbal phrase "Terrorist wins." in a deep husky voice. that is all i can tell you about because i have never played it.
Originally posted by wormwoodThat's becaue Americans dream of being pro athletes, movie stars, and gangsters. Not professional chess players like Russians.
well, it was dissolved 1991, 15 years ago.
but russia alone is pretty far ahead of usa it seems. all former soviet states do well. especially ukraine, with only 50 million polulation against usa's 300 million. that makes ukraine 6 times more dense with high leverl players compared to usa.
FIDE stats:
country avg GMs IMs #titled
1 Russia ...[text shortened]... a also has 6x more high level players than usa, taking into account the 150 million population.
Im 21 and there was a small chess club in my primary school(5-11yr olds) but nothing over that at any of my schools or colleges, and not even at uni now! It is quite disappointing but I guess its just not popular enough these days for the younger generation. Maybe a bit of promotion to get its profile up might help, like advertising this site to everyone you meet and then it might catch on abit more....who knows?🙂
I'm 40. In my younger days (primary school) there were a lot of school chess clubs. I actually was the leader of one of them.
We could easily gather 30-40 young players (out of 500 pupils) twice a week! Today school chess is sadly enough suffering heavily in Denmark.
As others have mentioned in this thread, there are so many more offers for young people nowadays; 20 fold more TV channels, Internet, PS2 etc etc. I don't have a solution to the problem, but every national chess federation has to analyze their respective situations very closely and act accordingly to ensure new generations of chess players.
Chess is very popular in an elementary school where I've been running the chess club for six years now. This year, I taught all the third graders how to play chess in their classrooms, and will be playing a quick 45 minute simul against 20 of them next week. Many of the kids lose interest in chess when they hit middle school. The high school had a chess club that died for lack of interest (but the two most enthusiastic kids were among the nerdiest kids imaginable). At the elementary level, girls and boys manifest nearly equal interest, but the girls quit faster in sixth grade.
Originally posted by kmac27We over-30s are too tired and too weak to play chess. All we care about is our pension and updating our wills. Most of the time we sleep. Sometimes the van comes and we go for a nice ride to Blackpool.
in the 70's and 80's when fischer was around did kids play chess more than now? it seems that nobody at my whole school and let alone anybody i know my age doesn't play chess. is it disapearing or just not im my area?
I'm a bit younger than 30 (14 to be exact), but chess is hardly disappearing in my school. In fact, it's growing. There are about 30 people who go on a regular basis there (28 of whom I beat on a regular basis, and the other two I don't is because they're like 2000's (literally)). There's about 1200 people who go to my school, so it's a pretty good ratio.
I learned in about 1958 and my first tmt was the state junior champ in 1962. There was only 6000 USCF members and the whole country had maybe 50 masters. I can remember a few times the USCF listed experts separate on the rating list! When you played in a weekend Swiss, masters were rare as hen's teeth. I didn't see my first real, live GM until 1975. As you can guess hardly anybody played chess prior to Fischer (Used to ask "Is that a game something like checkers?"😉 After Fischer, membership started climbing and most everybody knew of Fischer and a little bit about the game.
Originally posted by masscatNorway didn't get its first GM until 1985. Now there are eight.
I learned in about 1958 and my first tmt was the state junior champ in 1962. There was only 6000 USCF members and the whole country had maybe 50 masters. I can remember a few times the USCF listed experts separate on the rating list! When you played in a weekend Swiss, masters were rare as hen's teeth. I didn't see my first real, live GM until 1975. As ...[text shortened]... bership started climbing and most everybody knew of Fischer and a little bit about the game.
Originally posted by moweutIt's called Counter-Strike and is a branch off of Half-Life.
i tell you what is the most popular game on the planet. from a sample of internet cafe taken over three continents and eastern europe.
it is that game where the players run around shooting each other/terrorists, sometimes in teams, sometimes as a single player game. try playing chess in an internet cafe where they have teams, the screaming/noise is someting ...[text shortened]... wins." in a deep husky voice. that is all i can tell you about because i have never played it.