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

I'm from Uzbekistan so I support that country. But I live in Canada

My guess would be Russia but with China closing the gap.

Russia and it is not even close.  Even if Wei Yi is world champ and China is ranked #1 in country ratings in the future, Russia is still easily the best country when it comes to chess.  If you stack the top 100 or top 500 Chinese player against top 100-500 Chinese, it would be a slaughter. Top 10 players is not the best indicator of chess strength for a country.

Yes, but chess is becoming more popular in China and they have the population numbers. I'm not saying next week or even next year, but it stands to reason they will eventually catch everyone.... Having the State back you also helps.....

2nd row!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

whatever i think it should be 1.Russia 2.China

im voting for china im from there i live in america now

Armenia has to be #1 . and they just won the PRO chess league championship. against China. They teach chess in these schools as a curriculum . Population is only 3 mil Russia is 144 mil.  34 GM's for such a small country, compared to only 216 GM,s for the Soviets.

Clearly, Russia is #1.

I remember a story in a magazine (Chess Life?) years ago where a club-level player in the USA was touring Moscow and stumbled on a chess tournament which he had time to play. So he registered but when he look up at the pairing boards, his rating was listed higher than it really was. He informed the TD that his real rating was lower and was told, "We don't use ratings that low here."

We don't use ratings that low here? that's your only argument? Armenia IS the strongest country for the game of chess. I backed my opinions up with facts not fiction. A country with 3 mil population beat a country with 1.3 billion hello?? that's just one indicator.  A lot of top players that are on other teams are Armenian. The represent the sport/game very well. 

da motherland

i think this is the top 10 best chess countries 

Per capita? Probably #1 Armenia, and #2 Azerbaijan.

Russia. In one of my computer science class, our professor was was teaching how to simulate chess moves and why super computers will eventually beat humans ( this was in 1992 before deep blue vs Kasparov), and then he turn around and says, " so unless you are Russian or your life depends on it, you may not be interested in thinking so many combinations".

WHY IS THERE NOT INDIA ANYWHERE?   WHY   WHY WHY 

No

USSR, not Russia.