A few minutes ago, I was paired with a player from Kosovo in Live Chess. My question is: Why did Chess.com add Kosovo to their list of countries when it's still not recognized as a sovereign country? 91 out of 193 (47.2%) UN member states have recognized Kosovo. Here's a photo of the countries that recognized Kosovo (green) and you can see that there are more countries (gray) that didn't recognize it than those who did.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/CountriesRecognizingKosovo.png/800px-CountriesRecognizingKosovo.png

Presumably because there were players that wanted to call themselves Kosovan.

It's a matter of personal identity, whether the state formally exists or not. There are loads of non-sovereign nations in the chess.com list, including my own. Live and let live.

Chess.com recognises a lot of principalities too; I've seen the Monaco flag on here once or twice. I don't know why they do, but personally I like it. It's more likely to please any resolute Kosovans than piss off anyone else, and anyone it does piss off had better have a good reason :P

I still think there's far too much emphasis on nationalism nowadays, though it's far better than it used to be. But that may be veering towards political talk, so let's be careful!

Well, I'm sure the TS from Serbia can think of a few.

@Alucardll, that's a fair point about 'political talk' - I find that most things are 'political' in some sense so it's hard not to talk about politics at all, even if you try.

Regarding 'nationalism', I think there's a difference between immature 'tubthumping' nationalism, and just identifying as part of the community you were brought up in, the people you live with, the culture, and so on. To me, that's all the chess.com flags are about. I'm sure @scottrf and others would agree that no right-minded English person would object to the Welsh or Scottish flag, so no reasonable Serbian should object to the Kosovo flag, if there are people who wish to identify themselves as such.

Monaco is a sovereign city state (country), why shouldn't it be on the country list? Name some other regions which are accepted as countries by chess.com. I checked the country list and Basque isn't there, so why Kosovo?

Wales is a country, a country that is a part of United Kingdom. Check Wikipedia. The situation about Kosovo is different than any of those you guys mentioned.

Every reasonable Serbian should object to the Kosovo flag. Read my post above. And what about those that would like to identify themselves as people from Basque or any other region or principality? Why aren't they given the opportunity to identify themselves as Basque?

Whatever the history, if people want to identify as Kosovan, or anything else, that's up to them. By your logic neither of the Koreas should be included, because they don't recognise each other.

And I'm sure they would add the Basque country if someone asked for it.

Both Koreas are internationally recognized as sovereign states, and if I may remind you, Serbia isn't the only country that doesn't recognize Kosovo.

Well if you want to request to the chess.com powers-that-be that they remove Kosovo from the list... go ahead by all means.

I strongly suspect I know what the answer will be.

Because I apparently forgot that principalities are sovereign states. What was I expecting they'd do? Put up the French flag? *facepalm*

Erik is quite prepared to consider eliminating a whole country (allegedly).

Eric wrote (4 years ago): why do some people choose holland then? :) we can get rid of holland, but again, why did 10% of "dutch" folks choose holland? :)

(btw, i'm 1/2 dutch) 

holland-and-the-netherlands

I envy you guys from Great-Britain who can chose between England, Scotland and Wales. I'd like to chose Bavaria myself.

Not forgetting the UK.

Exactly my point. Why Kosovo and no Bavaria, Catalonia, Basque? It would be easier to eliminate Kosovo from the country list than to add hundreds of other regions...

It's a marketing ploy:

"Chess.com has 5,337,263 members from 240 countries!"

even though there are apparently only about 196 countries 'officially'.

http://www.chess.com/members/search.html?country=Catalonia

catalonia is there

@shinokk

This is an American site (well, I believe so) and since the U.S. recognized Kosovo it is logical one can use their flag here, isn`t it? And so did my country (Czech Republic). BTW, Bahrain recognized Kosova as an independent state, too. Consequently, Republic of Kosovo is an independent state to me. 

Table clearly shows that those who choose the countries within the UK are stronger players than those who choose the UK or GB (!)