Which Nation produces the best Chess players ?

everything you said was completely false and stupid.

nah, I'm kidding. Russia has a well oiled machine for producing chess talent that has been honed over many years.

I can never be nationalistic about chess, if I'm to be honest. Chess is a sport that has never belonged to the british( unless you count staunton)

Short did really well, he's from Britain so don't forget to count him too.

Back when the Soviet Union existed, the Soviets were ten thousand miles ahead of the competition. Now, China is a rising star, (considering its status as a semi-developing country). Both were/are communist. I see a pattern.

Vladimir Lenin said that chess was the gymnasium of the mind, and him and other communist leaders believed that the game preached communism. So, they see a political benefit in advocating it. They did a pretty good job also, except when they murdered Vladimir Petrov in the camp and forced Korchnoi to flee to Switzerland and Kamsky to the United States. If you add the Communist satellite states, they reign supreme. I will whip out my chess olympid book, and you will see my point.

Phew! What is the world without being false and stupid? :)

I think I meant one does not become a great player by the virtue of being Chinese, but that Chinese culture (at the current time) is supporting chess and helping talented players grow much faster. Can't have that much talent unless you're finding it and helping it grow! I can't articulate that well, sorry.

The following are the top six accomplishers in each olympiad

Helsinki, 1952                                              

Communist          Capitalist              

4                         2

Amsterdam, 1954

Communist          Capitalist

4                          2

Moscow, 1956

Communist         Capitalist

4                          2

Munich, 1958

Communist           Capitalist

4                          2

Leipzig, 1960

Communist          Capitalist

5                        1

Varna, 1962

Communist         Capitalist

4                       2

Tel-Aviv, 1964

Communist        Capitalist

4                       2

Havana, 1966

Communist        Capitalist

4                      2

Lugano, 1968

Communist      Capitalist

4                    2

The Nation of Islam?

LOL here we go again...

OK, if I gotta thow my 2 cents in - my top three are:

1. Russia

2. Ukraine

3. India

It's obviously Russia.

Naw. Not much chess there but they are the leading per capita importer of bow ties, and the only nation with a Ministry of Blue-eyed Devils.

 What about Casiotone Nation?

Take care now friends and neighbours, not to give unintentional accidental offence ...grammar badly wrong...surely we know  that Islam is not a nation but a world religion with followers in many nations, as has Christianity.

 Israel is in the top 3 even though it is a much smaller country than USSR, China and USA. I have no interest in Israel and prob will never go there, but the jews also produce the best mathematicians - take for instance Einstein and that Jew from Russia that solved that theoretical math problem a year or teo ago (he was awarded the noble prize, but didnt accept it - cant remember his name). Kasparovs father was also a Jew: Weinstein.

I think Jews have the greatest intellect per capita. (gee, just a shame they cant solve that war - but thats not the point here).

Well, the Nation of Islam is a real religion, though so far from orthodox Islam that it is not accepted as real Islam.

I've always believed it was Russia.  I'm not sure but I think Chess is part of the curriculum over there in schools. 

Actually there isn't any nobel prize for maths, because of some skirt-troubles that Nobel had in his life...he was awarded with the Fields prize, which is the equivalent to the math's nobel prize. Going back to the main theme, I think the point was presented in the first posts of this discussion: China is, as USSR was, a country which PRODUCES players, because there's a big effort from the government to do so... but what makes players from as f.e. US or Spain play and mature as players is different from Chinese ones. So if we speak about quality it's not about countries...except if you are from Russia haha

18 Grandmasters in Sweden!? Gee that shows what I know about my country.

What if that FIDE table up above took population size into consideration, i.e., country population per titled player? 

Combining Dustin's post above with population data, Russia actually ends up looking best among the 10 largest countries (of course, they ran a national chess factory back in the day), China and India fall a bit. (Worldwide average is 574,000 earth inhabitants per titled player, just a bit fewer than the US.) 

Some smaller countries do quite well. Didn't do them all, but Greece and Sweden come in way ahead of the US on this statistic, with 115k and 74k citizens per titled player, respectively. Undoubtedly, there are others.

CountryCitizens per titled player (in 000s)

Of course, if we calculated GMs per square kilometer (look up country land area stats), Russia plunges downwards fast! (Tongue firmly in cheek.)

cheers

The Jewish contribution to human progress has been enormous and VASTLY out of proportion to their actual numbers. They are a constant source of both amazement and inspiration.

"While Jews are approximately 0.25% of the world's population, Jews make up approximately 22% of all Nobel Prize laureates worldwide." [!!] [In contrast, for example, from a population 117 times larger than the global Jewish one, the Islamic world can boast a mere 9 Nobel Laureates!]

Concerning Israel: (merely a sample of many quotable facts)

"Israel is one of the tiniest nations on the face of the earth...only about 8,000 sq. miles, 2½ times the size of Rhode Island and only slightly larger than the Canary Islands!"

YET:

- Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a  large margin - 109 per 10,000 people -- as well as one of the highest per capita rates of patents filed.

- Israel is ranked #2 in the world for venture capital funds right behind the  US.

- Israel has the highest average living standards in the Middle East.

- Israel's $100 billion economy is larger than all of its immediate [Muslim] neighbors combined. [Including oil-rich Arab nations. This is the most astonishing statistic!!]

- Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.

- Israel has the world's second highest per capita of new books.

- 80% of biotechnology in the ENTIRE world comes from Israel. [!!]

- Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world (apart from Silicon  Valley).

- Israel leads the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the  workforce, with 145 per 10,000...

And yet many would see this tiny but super-advanced nation eradicated (for doing things that also many other countries have done). That would be a disservice to all mankind.

The USA has a lot of ex-USSR emigres. . .