Some Numbers for Rating Activity

After taking the time to download and prepare the FIDE Rating List - January 2018, what can be learned from the data? The left side of the chart below shows numbers similar to last year's post The Lower Rating Band (January 2017), which compared numbers of rated players by federation in 2016 and 2017.

The table on the bottom left is particularly noteworthy, not only because of the two new federations, but because of the disappearance of Bulgaria. What happened to the more than 1550 Bulgarian players shown in 2017? They have been subsumed into the 'FID' (FIDE) numbers shown in the table on the top left. For more about the reasons behind this, see last week's post on the FIDE's Ethics Commission 2017.

January 2017/-18 FIDE Rating Lists

Left top: Federations with largest increase
Left bottom: Federations appearing/disappearing
Right: Largest % active players 2018 (>100 players)

The table on the right is a new analysis I created after calculating the numbers of inactive players in the 'FRL January 2018' post. It shows the percentage of active players in 2018 for federations having 100 players or more. I chose the number 100 to demonstrate that small and medium size federations can have an impact on the growth of interest in chess. The top two federations are both countries in Africa.