World Chess: New maps and statistics

by ChessBase
11/3/2013 – Michael Paterek, a computer scientist and FIDE master from Poland, has sent as a few wonderful maps and graphs that certainly catch the eye. The information presented is based on our recent article of the World's biggest nation, but Michael takes it to a whole new level adding new information and even the possibility of exploring different country's highest rated player and their player at position 100 with interactive maps.

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Recent we published an article on which is the World's biggest chess nation. As a response to that article Michael Paterek of Poland sent us in response that this information presented, as well as many other statistics in the chess world, could be presented in a better, more readable and much more beautiful way.

Let's take a look at Boris Schipkov closer look at the January 2012 FIDE Rating List and the statistics that came up from that:

Number of internationally rated players

Pl Country
Nat.
Jan 2008
percent
Jan 2012
percent
1 Germany
GER
11,123
12.7
15,442
11.6
2 Russia
RUS
10,036
11.4
14,422
10.8
3 Spain
ESP
6,901
7.9
12,054
9.0
4 France
FRA
5,690
6.5
10,099
7.6
5 India
IND
3,370
3.8
7,954
6.0
6 Poland
POL
3,553
4.0
5,416
4.1
7 Italy
ITA
2,441
2.8
4,670
3.5
8 Hungary
HUN
2,893
3.3
4,216
3.2
9 Czech Republic
CZE
2,586
2.9
4,054
3.0
10 Serbia
SRB
2,396
2.7
3,043
2.3
11 United States
USA
1,824
2.1
2,691
2.0
12 Greece
GRE
1,252
1.4
2,375
1.8
13 Ukraine
UKR
1,643
1.9
2,355
1.8
14 Netherlands
NED
1,581
1.8
2,190
1.6
15 Austria
AUT
1,507
1.7
1,987
1.5
16 Romania
ROU
1,386
1.6
1,894
1.4
17 Brazil
BRA
1,041
1.2
1,885
1.4
18 Croatia
CRO
1,363
1.6
1,884
1.4
19 Slovakia
SVK
1,152
1.3
1,810
1.4
Other  
24,003
27.4
33,108
24.8
All  
87,741
100.0
133,549
100.0

Which can be much more easily viewed as the following:

Percentage of players per country

Which gives us the possibility of doing many other things. Michael has submitted to us the following graphs:

Amount of players per country in the top 100

The same graph as above, but for women players

But even more important than being able to accurately visualize data, Michael has created graphics of very relevant data. For example the following depicts the Grandmasters per country:

Colors are calculated based on the values of the number of GMs. The higher the value, the darker the color. The area of each country is painted with the color calculated based on data from fide.com.

The Map is dark in the expected regions: Russia dominates with its number of grandmasters, while American and several European countries have also a large amount of gms.

But definitely the most impressive part of the maps series is the following interactive maps that he has prepared for us. The first one gives the user the rating of the player ranked 100 depending on which country they highlight it. Try it out:

click on the picture to use the interactive features

The following interactive map will show you the rating of the highest rated player per country:

click on the picture to use the interactive features

Michael Paterek

Michael has a master's degree in computer science from the Warsaw University of Technology in Poland. He is also interested in aerospace engineering and electrical and electronic engineering as a hobby.

Aditionally he is a FIDE Master title, with two International Master norms. he learned to play chess at the age of 5, but never had a coach. His favorite chess books is Nimzowitsch's My System and his favorite players: Kasparov, Karpov and Tal. In his spare time he designs website and does programming.


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