# of chess games played?

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agrix

Hi guys - heres some questions for all of you who like speculating in numbers - feel free to participate. Many of you probably know the math of chess telling, that there are more possible different chess games than the number of atoms in the universe. While this huge number can be hard to grasp, maybe you can try and put a number on the following:

  1. How many unique chess games would you guess approximately have been played out since the invention of "modern chess" in the 15th century?
  2. How many on the internet?
  3. How many on chess.com?
  4. How many have you played yourself (online/offline)?
chyss

Trillions. Hundreds of Billions. Billions. 50,000.

agrix

Lol - are these all "educated guesses"? How many "chess players" are there in the world and what are the approximate avarage no. of games per year for each and so on?

You estimate a total of 50,000 personal games? Thats sure sounds like a lot. 

RomyGer

Answer 4 : 25000 internet, 2500 OTB

chyss

Yes. Hundreds of millions. A conservative estimate.

agrix

Mhh.. guess I have only played around 500 games in all. What a rookie I am

From the huge number of games played from which of course only a small part is in game databases , I wonder how many of the games that are exact copies? For your guys with huge databases: are there exact copies within your collection and if so - how many games have these kind of "copies"?