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Does anyone know how many active OTB tournament chess players there are in Russia compared to the US. I will guess 4 to 1.
There are about 2500 active US OTB chess players that are better than me. I will carelessly guess that there are 10,000 Active Russian OTB chess players that are better than me
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Can you believe there was a time when I knew 1) the name of every GM in the world-about a hundred 2) everyone rated over 2200 in the US-all 50 of them 3) the name of every minority and female player in my state and 4) I was rated in the top 600 in the US(!!) There were 5000-6000 USCF members and my life membership cost $100.
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Odie
Sounds like you have more life eperieance than I. DOB 12-31-65
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4:1 might be an over-estimate of the ratio, given that the population of the USA is more than twice as big as Russia's (313 million vs 143 million).
Also, chess was heavily promoted in the Soviet era to "prove" their intellectual superiority over the West. That motivation has gone away since the fall of the Soviet Union so maybe chess isn't being pushed so hard, which would result in a decrease in participation. There seem to be far fewer people from the former Soviet Union at the top of the FIDE ratings list than there used to be, which might be indicative of a big fall in tournament players, too. On the other hand, it might be that tournament chess is still strong but the state is no longer training people to become world-class GMs so fewer people are making that leap.
Dave.
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Here’s a site I discovered with population and rated players by country. BTW: DOB 1945
http://users.otenet.gr/~coolpalm/Players_Population.htm
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Yes, I would have agreed with richerby on this one but I guess the Russian program has longevity.
Odie_Spud's link suggests that phys was being conservative and 5:1 is a better approximation.
I haven't found numbers for the Russian Chess Federation yet but just looking at FIDE statistics, the 5:1 ratio is supported.
Make that 12500, phys. 
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