FIDE Rating List - January 2024

A new year means a look at the first FIDE rating list of the year. I've been doing this for so many years that I repeated that first sentence from last year without consciously copying it. Even better, I have a reliable checklist to follow.

1) Identify last year's post: FIDE Rating List - January 2023 (January 2023).

2) Identify the source of the FIDE data: FIDE Ratings Download (ratings.fide.com).

STANDARD
TXT format (31 Dec 2023, Sz: 9.77 MB)

3) Compare some basic counts over the past few years. Going back to the start of 2020 gives pre-covid 19 as a reference point.

2024: >440K players; >265K marked inactive
2023: >405K players; >253K marked inactive
2022: >377K players; >228K marked inactive
2021: >362K players; >174K marked inactive
2020: >354K players; >181K marked inactive
[...]

4) Analyze changes in players per federation. The upper chart shows two new federations (Grenada and Niger). No federation had a name change, giving FIDE exactly 200 federations.

The lower charts show federations with the largest increase in number of players (left) and the largest percentage increase (right; for federations with at least 100 players at the start of 2023). In last year's post I noted,

Mexico ('MEX') and Bangladesh ('BAN') are on both charts.

Copy that for Mexico, then add China ('CHN') and Philippines ('PHI'). Bangladesh missed being included this year by only two places on the left chart.

5) Identify ideas for a followup post. In last year's only followup post, FIDE Rating List - Active Players (January 2023), I remembered an idea from 2022:-

One idea is to look at the doubling of players under the FIDE flag ('FID'), as calculated on the right [chart]. This must be a consequence of the war in Ukraine, but should be confirmed.

Will I manage to do it in 2024? To get started, here are counts of 'FID' players for the past five years:-

2020 : 252
2021 : 254
2022 : 263
2023 : 527
2024 : 798

Yes, this confirms that there has been a substantial increase during the past two years. What more can we learn from the rating lists about this?