POPULARITY OF CHESS IN YOUR COUNTRY

It is fairly popular in England, not massivley popular though. But we have chess leagues all across the country. In Bristol the city I am from we probably have about 30 - 40 chess teams in our Bristol and District Chess League.

There are about 20 different clubs in the league and a few clubs have about five or six teams in the league (A, B, C, D, E & F) teams. A majority of clubs have two teams (A & B team). However, I think chess is probably declining ......

down south we say all kinds of odd things like y'all (you all) we drop the "g's" on our infinitive verbs  i.e. huntin, fishin, smokin, runnin etc...we like to call cola "pop" and it IS acceptable to say a'int as in "that a'int right!"  or "that a'int no good" which technically is a double negative but we use it all the time in west virginia

Um sir, I hate to break it to you, but West Virginia is not the south. You have many things in common with the south (mainly a preponderance of hillbillies) but you are not in the south. I mean, you guys became a state by breaking away from Virginia to avoid the civil war!

And in the South, there is no such thing as "pop." That marks you as a Yankee. Down here, everything is "Coke" regardless of brand.

 well technically we ARE south of that mason-dixon line thing, actually it makes up part of our northern state line...so yeah we are "southerners" by definition, but yanks look at me funny when i ask for a pop so maybe its a Wv thing...i would say we are a breed all our own a mix of north and south with a dash of mountain culture individuality. 

When I was young my friends and I used to have rock "chunking" contests too ! I no longer chunk rocks but, as you can see, I still use "chunk" to mean throw. I recall the first time I used this word in Army basic training everyone in the room cracked up except for a guy from Mississippi. He was as confused as me as to what was so funny?! 

It's sort of popular in my part of the USA (northeast). I'm always called a nerd for playing though...

thank u

I m GLAD WITH YOUR RESPONSE MAKE THIS TOPIC POPULAR

Seriously good and worthwhile comments above.  Glad of the opportunity to read them, but was somewhat "phased" by one which indicated a cut of higher age of 60 from participating.  Maybe as I am in my 80th year of life, I should not be so audacious as to make these comments.

Yes, they just had a big cheating scandal. C'est dommage.

Just started playing a little over a year ago, now I am totally addicted.

Lousy player, but love the game. Chess.com rocks!

Where are the Russians?

I'm right here, comrade

Extremely marginal in Brazil

Well, lets put it this way. I am American. Many American teens are bigoted and ignorant of everything but who Tommy is going to prom with. Most of them are complete dolts, too. You could call me a bigot for saying that, but until you live here, you really have no idea. 

Therefore, my school does not even have a chess club... :(

I'm looking to organize one this year though, so that I have a few people to play OTB with. I'm just worried that no one would join it. Demand for it isn't exactly high.

I agree with unicylist's remarks in full. The chess situation at my HS isn't quite as dire, we have a team, and we play the other HS' in the area. (there are quite a few, as I live near a large urban center) But our team has a mere 10 players in a school with 2200 kids, a depressing statistic at best.

I have to disagree with some of my fellow 'murkins here who say that most people probably know how the pieces move but don't really play.  I'd have to say that most people here probably don't know how the pieces move.  To most people here, chess is like that obscure thing that only smart nerds do.  I'm willing to bet that most Americans don't even know how to set up the board properly, and if you asked them to make a move they'd probably stare at the board like it was a schematic.

Where I live, it's hard to find people who play regularly, though in a local small town of under 20,000, a chess club started which has about 7 or 8 regular players every week.  I personally haven't gone to the meetings due to personal commitments on the weekends, but hope to resume going soon.

Chess isn't popular with the average person in the United States, only because most people want to play a game that doesn't require hard concentration and thinking.  Most people after a long days work don't feel they can muster sitting down and playing good chess.

Also, chess intimidates a lot of people because they feel you need a high level of intelligence to play it.

I would love more to play OTB with another person where I live, then to play here every day at chess.com.  But, it is rare to find someone who really likes to play.

I agree with socket for the most part. Although you don't necessarily need a high level of intelligence, you do need to have a logical and intuitive mind. School smarts are unnecessary though; look at Bobby Fischer. He hated school with a passion.

Popularity & Chess.  The last time these two words came into cosmic convergence was when Fischer played Spassky.  After Bobby won, then came a surge of members into local & national chess clubs.  All of a sudden everybody wanted to play chess.  Then...   well, things took a down-turn.  And let's don't blame it all on Fischer's disappearance from the scene.  Frankly speaking, chess is a unique corner of human activity.  That being said; it's "popularity" will rise & fall with the times.

As for the popularity per country or nation, I have no expert statistics to site here.  But I will dare to say that outside of our little corner of the world we inhabit that chess has been viewed by the public to have been "solved" by computers & thus relegated to the pages of history.  So, "the public" (whatever nation they may be from) has little interest in playing a game in which computers take away the perceived human ability to win. 

But now we are in a new age thanks to social media such as this.  So, chess may have a chance to be more popular than it ever was.  I hope so.