2737 FIDE rated games on an average day
Devangshu Datta | New Delhi
February 14, 2014 Last Updated at 21:25 IST

The FIDE Development Committee has released some interesting metrics about the ways in which it measures development. It considers variables like the number of active rated players, open tournaments, round robins, rated games played, games played by foreigners in a given country, games played by players outside home federation.

The first four variables are self-explanatory perhaps. The number of round robins dropped in 2013 to 1,470, compared to 1,614 in 2012. But the other variables all rose. There are over 101,000 active rated players across 164 national federations in 2013 (92,661 players in 2012). There were 7,219 opens in 2013 (6,954 in 2012). A total of 999,037 rated games were played in 2013, (921,553 games in 2012). That’s a mind-boggling 2,737 rated games on an average day.

Games played by foreigners may be an indicator of how good a Fed is at attracting talent. The number of games played by players outside their own federation is also interesting. Players may go abroad for a variety of reasons including a hunt for norms, or if there are few attractive events at home.

A big imbalance in the numbers could indicate some sort of problem. For example if one nation’s players regularly compete abroad but few foreigners play in that nation, this may highlight some issue with the national organisational setup. Extreme examples occurred for example, in former Yugoslavia during the civil war in the 1990s.

India has a high number of active players and many rated games are played locally. It does reasonably in terms of organising opens. But it’s not among the top 20 Federations in terms of round robins and it has an imbalance with more games played abroad by Indians (6,734) than games in India by foreigners (4,016).

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