As of today, there are 116 332 people and six intelligent monkeys in the United States  who are members of chess.com. That's quite the number, isn't it? In fact, those assorted mammals alone make up 43.7% of the site's total members. Impressive! One might almost say that this website is well-grounded in the U.S.A, where it's most loyal members clearly live.

    In saying that, however, one would be wrong. One would do well to go stand in the corner and think over what one has said. Canada has, in fact, a slightly higher percentage of chess.com members than the United States. That's right, Canada. 0.04131% of the

Canadian

population are members of Chess.com, as opposed to 0.03812% of all American citizens. More than four of every ten thousand

Canadians

make it their daily passion to contribute to the hallowed... er... forums of this monumental website. That compared with a measly nearly four out of every ten thousand Americans. Not only that, but the

Australians

have a chess.com population density of 0.03811% of their kangaroo-hopping, olympic-swimming, criminal-ancestry citizens on the site. That's one 0.00001 less than the Americans. Are you Yanks going to let things stay that way? What if some Aussie finds their way on to chess.com one day and accidentally registers? It would be a historic day, to be sure.

Now us Beer-swilling, hockey-fighting, newfie-clubbing Canadians, on the other hand, are untouchable up here on the top of the podium.

Erik would be much better off if he packed his bags, folded his laptop, and moved a few miles up the coast to Vancouver. The paparazzi would swarm him from the instant he crossed the border. Swooning fans would be around every corner, local curlers would throw down their brooms for the first time in their lives just to shake his hand, and the Prime Minister would fly his private jet over twice a year simply to meet with him. The movie deals would practically sign themselves.

So there you have it, folks. Want to meet a chess player? Then come up north to Canada, eh?

 

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Here are the numbers, in case anybody's interested. I calculated the percentage for each of the top twenty chess.com countries.

First off, here's the official list of membership numbers on chess.com:

http://www.chess.com/members/member_countries.html

Now, here's my calculated list of the percentage of citizens from each of the top twenty countries who are members of chess.com. You might notice that some of the rankings change significantly.

1. Canada: ............... 0.04131%

2. United States: ........ 0.03812%

3. Australia: .............. 0.03811%

4. Ireland: ................ 0.03380%

5. Israel: .................. 0.02672%

6. United Kingdom: ...... 0.02472%

7. Bulgaria: ............... 0.02272%

8. Greece: ................ 0.02136%

9. Netherlands: ........... 0.01236%

10. Romania: .............. 0.01127%

11. Philippines: ........... 0.00987%

12. Malaysia: .............. 0.00937%

13. England: ............... 0.00597%

14. Turkey: ................ 0.00439%

15. Egypt: ................. 0.00426%

16. Italy: ................... 0.00308%

17. France: ................ 0.00274%

18. Mexico: ............... 0.00210%

19. Brazil: ................. 0.00148%

20. India: .................. 0.00115%

 

P.S. I realize that England is technically part of the United Kingdom, but I was going off Chess.com numbers, and if those members decided to distinguish themselves as English, good on them!