FIDE Rating Lists Restored

Hallelujah! For years I've been looking at the first FIDE rating list of every New Year -- the January list -- and complaining that the data is crippled. Why crippled? Because FIDE policy has been to use the lists as an incentive to keep national federations up to date with their dues. No payment of dues, no players from that federation on the rating list, even if it hurts all users of the lists, including other, fully paid-up federations.

Last year, in my post on Federations Large and Small (February 2014), I noticed that Ecuador (ECU) was missing from the list, but that

A search for 'ECU' on ratings.fide.com lists the players without their standard ratings, but with their rapid and blitz ratings. Silly, no? But that's FIDE.

Last month, FIDE announced a New Policy towards Federations in Arrears:-

The new policy, which comes into immediate effect, is that on 31st December the Treasurer lists on the FIDE website those countries that are deemed to be over six months in arrears. Until the arrears have been paid off, players from these Federations cannot participate in any FIDE events that are under the aegis of
a) the World Championship & Olympiad Commission or Events Commission,
b) Continental competitions that provide qualifiers to any of the aforesaid competitions.

As promised, on 31 December FIDE listed the names of twenty-five Federations in Arrears, including Ecuador. Contrary to what I expected to see, most of the 25 federations were present on the January 2014 rating list.

The table on the left shows which federations were missing a year ago and present this year (or vice versa), including a count of rated players in the federation. Now that I have more reliable data to work with, look for a series of related posts over the next weeks.