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This interesting site has a "World map of chess grandmasters" which looks like this:

enter image description here

Apart from the fact that Russia is very wide (it looks like it crosses 10 time zones), it looks like Iceland has more GMs per capita than Russia. This is a nice picture but doesn't give the figures.

So, what are the top 50 countries ranked by GMs per million? And how does that change if you make it GMs per thousand players (FIDE registered players)?

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  • Just search that on Google and you should find some answer.
    – user26887
    Apr 25, 2021 at 19:18
  • @TobyHarnish The problem with that is that the results are rubbish. Top search result was - pogonina.com/… - which dates from 2010! That has Monaco on 0 GMs. Currently they have 3. It's not very useful. There are far better results on this forum.
    – Brian Towers
    Apr 25, 2021 at 19:59

1 Answer 1

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Here are the results of queries on the latest (April 2021) FIDE rating list.

Interesting to note that Iceland is actually only in 2nd. I guess in the map in the question Monaco is too small to see. The first big country (population > 1 million) is Armenia in 5th. Russia, the country with the most GMs - 240, is only in 31st place. No sign in this list of China or India.

Country - GMs - GMsPerMillion

  1. Monaco - 3 - 79.4
  2. Iceland - 13 - 39.1
  3. Andorra - 2 - 27.9
  4. Faroe Islands - 1 - 20.3
  5. Armenia - 40 - 13.3
  6. Montenegro - 6 - 9.6
  7. Georgia - 30 - 8.0
  8. Croatia - 30 - 7.1
  9. Serbia - 50 - 7.0
  10. Latvia - 11 - 5.6
  11. Hungary - 53 - 5.4
  12. Slovenia - 11 - 5.3
  13. Israel - 44 - 5.2
  14. Macedonia - 10 - 4.8
  15. Bulgaria - 33 - 4.58
  16. Estonia - 6 - 4.57
  17. Czech Republic - 34 - 3.2
  18. Norway - 16 - 3.1
  19. Lithuania - 8 - 2.8
  20. Azerbaijan - 26 - 2.7
  21. Mongolia - 8 - 2.6
  22. Denmark - 14 - 2.5
  23. Cuba - 27 - 2.4
  24. Slovakia - 13 - 2.4
  25. Netherlands - 38 - 2.24
  26. Sweden - 22 - 2.23
  27. Bosnia Herzegovina - 8 - 2.1
  28. Ukraine - 87 - 2.0
  29. Belarus - 17 - 1.78
  30. Moldova - 6 - 1.68
  31. Russia - 240 - 1.64
  32. Scotland - 7 - 1.31
  33. Greece - 14 - 1.29
  34. Poland - 49 - 1.27
  35. Qatar - 3 - 1.24
  36. Spain - 57 - 1.23
  37. Germany - 95 - 1.17
  38. Switzerland - 9 - 1.08
  39. Romania - 21 - 1.06
  40. Turkmenistan - 5 - 1.05
  41. Austria - 9 - 1.03
  42. Kazakhstan - 15 - 0.85
  43. Belgium - 9 - 0.796
  44. France - 51 - 0.791
  45. Finland - 4 - 0.727
  46. Singapore - 4 - 0.723
  47. England - 36 - 0.679
  48. Paraguay - 4 - 0.584
  49. Uruguay - 2 - 0.575
  50. Uzbekistan - 17 - 0.548

When you look at GMs per thousand FIDE registered players the picture changes. Armenia moves to the top and China appears in the list at no. 5.

FullName - Players - GMs - GMSPerThousandPlayers

  1. Armenia - 1789 - 40 - 22.4
  2. Monaco - 136 - 3 - 22.1
  3. Qatar - 147 - 3 - 20.4
  4. Andorra - 151 - 2 - 13.2
  5. China - 3783 - 48 - 12.7
  6. Macedonia - 1048 - 10 - 9.54
  7. Georgia - 3377 - 30 - 8.88
  8. Cuba - 3080 - 27 - 8.77
  9. Israel - 5316 - 44 - 8.23
  10. Turkmenistan - 606 - 5 - 8.25
  11. Bulgaria - 4512 - 33 - 7.31
  12. Scotland - 994 - 7 - 7.04
  13. Uzbekistan - 2417 - 17 - 7.03
  14. Belarus - 2648 - 17 - 6.42
  15. Montenegro - 1031 - 6 - 5.82
  16. Iceland - 2244 - 13 - 5.79
  17. Ukraine - 15318 - 87 - 5.68
  18. United States - 18067 - 96 - 5.31
  19. Moldova - 1139 - 6 - 5.27
  20. Azerbaijan - 5223 - 26 - 4.98
  21. Serbia - 10151 - 50 - 4.93
  22. Hungary - 11116 - 53 - 4.77
  23. Netherlands - 8152 - 38 - 4.66
  24. Tajikistan - 232 - 1 - 4.31
  25. Vietnam - 2996 - 12 - 4.01
  26. England - 9464 - 36 - 3.80
  27. Canada - 4059 - 14 - 3.45
  28. Mongolia - 2331 - 8 - 3.43
  29. Latvia - 3284 - 11 - 3.35
  30. Paraguay - 1210 - 4 - 3.31
  31. Sweden - 6694 - 22 - 3.29
  32. Estonia - 1853 - 6 - 3.24
  33. Croatia - 9292 - 30 - 3.23
  34. Bosnia Herzegovina - 2794 - 8 - 2.86
  35. Russia - 96262 - 240 - 2.49
  36. Faroe Islands - 404 - 1 - 2.48
  37. Czech Republic - 14000 - 34 - 2.43
  38. Norway - 6671 - 16 - 2.4
  39. Germany - 39740 - 95 - 2.39
  40. Argentina - 10001 - 23 - 2.3
  41. Finland - 1781 - 4 - 2.245
  42. Slovenia - 5201 - 11 - 2.11
  43. Philippines - 6200 - 13 - 2.1
  44. Australia - 4824 - 10 - 2.07
  45. Romania - 10165 - 21 - 2.066
  46. Switzerland - 4528 - 9 - 1.99
  47. Denmark - 7074 - 14 - 1.98
  48. Kazakhstan - 8056 - 15 - 1.86
  49. Lithuania - 4575 - 8 - 1.75
  50. Poland - 28878 - 49 - 1.7
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  • Russia has almost 100k registered players! wow
    – Isac
    Apr 27, 2021 at 0:05

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