how many people are actually active on chess.com?

according to chess.com there are over 15 million members on this site but it appears less than a million are active. This is probably people who have created an account, played a bit of chess then left. so why have so many people left? it's not because of the the flaws on the site because although chess.com isn't perfect, it doesn't warrant 14 million people leaving.

so how many people are active? (my guess 100,000)  

and why so many of the 15,000,000 have vanished?

A lot of people just play chess casually. They create an account, play a few games and realize that they really aren't very good Or they get on, planning on learning to play and get overwhelmed. Or just have trouble figuring out the site.

Sometimes people that have been here for years and were active, will stop coming. They either stop playing online chess, move to some other site, or are just taking an extended break. Sometimes they'll come back.

I'm guessing a least 20% of the accounts are relatively active.

still shocking. that means that if you created a chess.com account there's a 80% that you're not active.

Infact in lichess is showed only online players at the moment.

In useless to show the number of the accounts registered.

90% of this accounts are closed, inactive..or play few games per year.

The correct stats to show may be only the "online players at the moment", "games played" and "Titled Players online" ...all updated in realtime (now seem that are updated every some minutes)

You can see how many people are online here anytime:

nearly 19 million members yet 60 thousand active. certainly a big difference. interesting how that is the case.

61,000 players online at one time sounds pretty remarkable to me.

Some people are busy, sleeping, or on a different website.

61,000 are not 3% but 0.3% - so if you're generous you get to 1.5% to 1.7% playing from time to time, which appears about right. 

On another note, a good stat for active players could be - people who spent at least five hours (or ten, or twenty) playing during the last 12 running months. Of course nobody wants to show that stat as it will be much lower than the number of players registered. 

On another note, and totally disrelated - is it true that the rating floors in the USCF inflate the whole rating pool?

I play against a USCF floored 2200, who actually plays like 1849, and my score changes as if he was really a 2200. 

Is that a situation? 

If it is, one could solve it by adjusting my rating after my game with him not according to 2200, but according to his performance rating over the last forty games or the last year - whichever is shorter. 

If he played fewer than 10 games during the year - adjust me as if I played someone without a rating (I think it's no adjustment). 

Also - if he wins a game or two, don't let his rating rise above the floor, unless his performance rating over the last forty games is at least 2200. That should take care of that.

i agree but why isn't the number something like 3,000,000. chess.com has touched 19 million lives but is currently touching less than 1% of that.

how many are even interested in chess ?

just because they arent active at this moment doesnt mean the accounts are inactive. a lot of people sleep right now or a lot just come once a week. Not mentioning that there are other things to do than playing on this site the whole day. So 60000 people online at once is pretty decent. Maybe in 30 minutes 60000 other people will be online and the others offline. You cant tell.

So what?

Because that's how life works.

The best way to estimate is to look at the statistics for Live and Daily Chess.  There is a number labeled global, which I think is the total number of active players.  It looks like a total of about 7M play Rapid, Blitz, Bullet, and Daily combined.  There will be some double counting because many play more than one type, but those data give a good approximation.

Note:  This is the number that is used to determine your rank and percentile.

 I just checked the statistics page and found this heading Global (Active).  Active is not defined.

but why do 99% of people think to themselves " i'm not using chess.com any more" or "I'm not playing chess anymore" obviously people will think that but 99% of people is not normal.

No. Only 60,000 were online at that point in time.

    You have to realize that its a world-wide site. While 9 million are going about their day,   9 million other members are probably asleep.