Country

Presumably because there were players that wanted to call themselves Kosovan.

It's a matter of personal identity, whether the state formally exists or not. There are loads of non-sovereign nations in the chess.com list, including my own. Live and let live.

Chess.com recognises a lot of principalities too; I've seen the Monaco flag on here once or twice. I don't know why they do, but personally I like it. It's more likely to please any resolute Kosovans than piss off anyone else, and anyone it does piss off had better have a good reason :P

I still think there's far too much emphasis on nationalism nowadays, though it's far better than it used to be. But that may be veering towards political talk, so let's be careful!

Well, I'm sure the TS from Serbia can think of a few.

@Alucardll, that's a fair point about 'political talk' - I find that most things are 'political' in some sense so it's hard not to talk about politics at all, even if you try.

Regarding 'nationalism', I think there's a difference between immature 'tubthumping' nationalism, and just identifying as part of the community you were brought up in, the people you live with, the culture, and so on. To me, that's all the chess.com flags are about. I'm sure @scottrf and others would agree that no right-minded English person would object to the Welsh or Scottish flag, so no reasonable Serbian should object to the Kosovo flag, if there are people who wish to identify themselves as such.

Whatever the history, if people want to identify as Kosovan, or anything else, that's up to them. By your logic neither of the Koreas should be included, because they don't recognise each other.

And I'm sure they would add the Basque country if someone asked for it.

Well if you want to request to the chess.com powers-that-be that they remove Kosovo from the list... go ahead by all means.

I strongly suspect I know what the answer will be.

Because I apparently forgot that principalities are sovereign states. What was I expecting they'd do? Put up the French flag? *facepalm*

Erik is quite prepared to consider eliminating a whole country (allegedly).

Eric wrote (4 years ago): why do some people choose holland then? :) we can get rid of holland, but again, why did 10% of "dutch" folks choose holland? :)

(btw, i'm 1/2 dutch) 

holland-and-the-netherlands

I envy you guys from Great-Britain who can chose between England, Scotland and Wales. I'd like to chose Bavaria myself.

Not forgetting the UK.

It's a marketing ploy:

"Chess.com has 5,337,263 members from 240 countries!"

even though there are apparently only about 196 countries 'officially'.

http://www.chess.com/members/search.html?country=Catalonia

catalonia is there

@shinokk

This is an American site (well, I believe so) and since the U.S. recognized Kosovo it is logical one can use their flag here, isn`t it? And so did my country (Czech Republic). BTW, Bahrain recognized Kosova as an independent state, too. Consequently, Republic of Kosovo is an independent state to me. 

Table clearly shows that those who choose the countries within the UK are stronger players than those who choose the UK or GB (!)