The strongest chess playing country in the world is...?

Most Chess Olympic Medals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_Olympiads

1	Soviet Union	18	1	0	19
2	Russia	6	3	1	10
3	United States	5	5	9	19
4	Hungary	3	6	2	11
5	Armenia	3	0	3	6
6	Ukraine	2	1	3	6
7	Yugoslavia	1	6	5	12
8	Poland	1	2	3	6
9	Germany*	1	1	3	5
10	England	0	3	3	6

It all depends on how you define "strongest", but in terms of top 10 players' ratings, obviously it's Russia for men's chess, as it is for number of titled players, IMs, and GMs. 

Russia seems to have the highest number of players in the top 10 (3 Russians), top 20 (6 Russians), and top 100 (25 Russians), and I would expect the pattern holds for 1000 too. I suspect that Russia will be top for most reasonable measures.

I'd be interested to see how the countries fare by population and number of titled players/olympic medals ratio. I'd guess Armenia would be top three, possibly first or second with that criteria.

sapientdust I can't argue with your reasoning here, BUT

I deliberately omitted a definition here, because my answer is going to be a "trick" answer that may not go over much better than the proverbial lead balloon

Party pooper!

• Grand Master : 11
• Woman Grand Master : 1
• International Master : 10
• Woman International Master : 1
• FIDE Master : 19
• Woman FIDE Master number : 1
•  http://ratings.fide.com/avgtoplist.phtml?country=ISL

These per capita comparisons are nonsense that favour small countries with a few outliers.

If a tiny country gets one gold in archery they will have a better per capita Olympics than China if China pick up every other medal. Even more ridiculous when you consider than you can only have a limited amount of entrants per event and they aren't suited to every one.

It's a little better for chess but still pretty meaningless.

Maybe, but it's always small countries that are favoured in per capita statistics.

Yes, they are obviously a good chess playing country, I wasn't suggest anything else, nor saying that merely being small will mean you're likely to be near the top. Just that a country like China, USA, Russia etc couldn't compete.

My understanding is that in Russia there is very little in the way of organized chess for adult amateurs.  My information however is very dated and definitely pre-internet.  

http://www.chessbase.com/columns/column.asp?pid=3

Russia being in first is no surprise since they've dominated the game of chess since its inception, but Ukraine at number 2? Didn't see that one coming.

If the world wanted to over take the Russians they take their coaches. This has been done in Gymnastics and produced great results. Just take a look at the teams at the top in the Olympic Gymnastics and look at the coaches. Even some of the players. Look how many athletets leave their country to train where the elite train.

without a consideration for popularity and importance, per capita arguments also carry less weight...

You really cannot talk about international chess until the rules were standardized for international play in the 1800s (especially the stalemate and castling rules).  The Mediterraneans dominated Western chess literature, but that was largely superior PR and constructed games.  Players like Greco certainly had an eye for combinations, but no conception of how to play until he spotted a combination.

A  L  B  A  N  I  A

Ukraine is really more remarkable, since chess is a favorite past time there, yet gets little support from the government. I was unable to find a chess club in Kiev on my visit there.

It's the main reason why Karjakin changed citizenship. He felt that Russia had more to offer chess players.

russia always has been as long as I been playing chess

Another obnoxious American nationalist...

I agree with Yereslov's sentiment BUT equating "American" with "USA" is also a form of obnoxious "USA nationalism" IMHO there are a few dozen other "American" nations in North, South and Central AMERICA. BTW I'm a "US American" myself