Chess Stats

Like they are for most sports, statistics are a big part of chess—just as Arpad Elo. On this page, we will explore several statistics about Chess.com and about chess itself, and not just about ratings. Some of these numbers may even help you look at Chess.com or the game of chess in a whole new way. So let's jump in.

Note: This page was last updated in September 2025.

Chess.com Stats

You may know that Chess.com is the world's most popular chess site, but what does that mean exactly? How many people are a part of Chess.com, and how many games do they play? You can find all of that information right here, and more.

Chess.com Members

Chess.com has over 225,000,000 registered members as of September 2025. You can always see an up-to-date total at the link provided.

Chess.com reached one million members in 2010 and 10 million members in 2014. In 2022, Chess.com hit the 100 million member mark, followed by 200 million in 2025.

Chess.com Games

On a typical day, between 15 million and 20 million games are played on Chess.com. That can mean up to 600 million games in a month or 7.2 billion in a year!

Who Wins More, White Or Black?

Players are about 7% more likely to win when playing White than Black. This finding comes from analyzing over 17 million Chess.com live games played on July 1, 2025.

Chess.com Time Controls

There are three basic time controls: rapid, blitz, and bullet. On Chess.com, about 46% of games are played at rapid time control, 35% at blitz, and 19% at bullet.

Highest Chess.com Ratings

As of September 2025, GM Hikaru Nakamura has the highest Chess.com Blitz rating ever at 3416, while Dutch GM Eline Roebers set the women's Chess.com Blitz rating record at 2936.

HIKARU BREAKS THE BLITZ RATING RECORD! ⚡️

During his Titled Tuesday victory, @GMHikaru reached a staggering 3416 Blitz rating - a site record! pic.twitter.com/kRrrc69ASt

— Chess.com (@chesscom) July 9, 2025

Most Common Openings

With so many ways to start a chess game—400 possible positions after just one move from both White and Black!—but what are the most popular ways of starting a game on Chess.com?

Most Watched Events

On Twitch, the second day of PogChamps 3 is the most-watched Chess.com broadcast, with 1.9 million views. It featured personalities such as xQc and Rainn Wilson. The most-watched broadcast of a single game was the 136-move sixth game of the 2021 World Championship between GMs Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi, with 1.8 million views, won by Carlsen.

On YouTube, tiebreaks in the 2023 World Championship, between GMs Ding Liren and Nepomniachtchi, represent the most watched Chess.com broadcast at 2.13 million views. Ding won. Directly behind it is the IM Not A GM Speed Chess Championship match in 2021 between IMs Levy Rozman and Eric Rosen with its 2.09 million views, won by Rozman.

General Chess Stats

Chess is bigger than Chess.com, of course. Much bigger. So, here are some incredible statistics about the game itself: the shortest game, the longest game, the youngest champions, the oldest champions, and more.

Shortest Possible Chess Games

Scholar's Mate is perhaps the most famous checkmate but, at four moves, it's not the shortest possible game—a game can actually end in checkmate after just two moves!

This checkmate is called Fool's Mate. Of course, a game can also end without checkmate at any time by resignation or forfeit, so the shortest possible game is really no moves, like in Game 2 of the 1972 World Championship.

And here's one more shortest game stat for you: the shortest known stalemate is just 10 moves! It was found by Sam Loyd in the 1850s.

Largest Number Of Theoretically Possible Moves

Without rules in place to end chess games that are no longer winnable for either side, the longest possible game would be infinite—just two people (or computers) pushing their kings around the board until the end of time. Fortunately, such rules do exist. So, how long can a legal game go?

In 2015, Francois Labelle calculated the longest possible chess game to be 8,848 moves. Labelle noted that, while a player can claim a draw after 50 moves without a capture or pawn move, the draw is not automatic under FIDE rules until 75 such moves. If enforcing a 50-move rule, then the longest game is "only" 5,898 moves—saving us all some time! 

Longest Chess Game In History

But what is the longest actual game? Under over-the-board tournament conditions, that would be the 272-move endurance test between CMs Peter Lalic and Billy Fellowes in 2024. They broke a 35-year-old record that had been set at 269 moves in 1989 by Ivan Nikolic and IM Goran Arsovic. The Nikolic-Arsovic game remains the longest draw ever in this category, while Lalic eventually came out ahead against Fellowes, making it the longest decisive game ever.

The longest known game between a grandmaster and a computer is 271 moves, which was played by Nakamura in 2008 against the engine Rybka. Hope you like bishops!

And speaking of grandmasters...

Grandmaster Stats

As of August 2025, there are 1,866 living grandmasters, of which 1,306 are active and 560 inactive (haven't played a rated classical game in at least 12 months). The highest official Elo rating (FIDE Classical) ever achieved by a grandmaster is 2882 by GM Magnus Carlsen. Carlsen's live rating reached as high as 2889.

The youngest grandmaster ever was 12-year-old GM Abhimanyu Mishra. You can find a list of every grandmaster age 14 or younger in our article, "The Youngest Chess Grandmasters In History." The oldest grandmaster ever was GM Yuri Averbakh, who died in 2022 at the age of 100. As of August 2025, the oldest living grandmaster is honorary GM Iivo Nei, who was born in 1931.

World Champion Stats

The youngest universally-recognized world champion in chess history is GM Gukesh Dommaraju, who won the 2024 World Championship at the age of 18. His record was previously held by GM Garry Kasparov (22) and Mikhail Tal (23). The youngest officially-recognized world champion was GM Ruslan Ponomariov, who was 16 when he won the 2002 FIDE World Championship—at a time when there were two competing world championships.

The oldest world champion, both at the start and the end of their time at the top, was also the first official world champion, Wilhelm Steinitz. Steinitz was 49 years old when he became world champion in 1886, and 58 when he lost the title in 1894.

The longest-reigning world champion was Emanuel Lasker, who held the title for 27 years (1894-1921). GMs Vasily Smyslov and Tal were champions for the shortest amount of time, about 10 months each.

The record for most world championships won is six, shared by Lasker (1894, 1896, 1907, 1908, twice in 1910) and Kasparov (1985, 1986, 1987, 1990, 1993, 1995). Lasker and Kasparov are also the top two players in length of time as both the world champion and the top-rated player in the world, at 211 months and 179 months, respectively. Kasparov was never rated less than #1 while world champion.

You can read more about every world champion in our article, "All The World Chess Champions."

Other General Chess Stats

Chess Engine Stats

The first chess engine, depending on how it is defined, could be Alan Turing's 1950 program, which no computer at the time was powerful enough to actually run. GM Mikhail Botvinnik helped work on the first engines capable of running on computers, while GM David Bronstein pioneered playing games against such engines.

The first computer to defeat against a world champion was Deep Blue, which won a game against Kasparov in 1996, but lost the larger match. A sequel in 1997 became the first time a computer beat a world champion in a match after a shocking, 18-move sixth and final contest.

The first chess engine based on a neural network was AlphaZero in 2017.

First Chess Magazine

As H.J.R. Murray noted on page 886 of his magnum opus, A History of Chess, the first chess magazine, called Le Palamede, was published in France in 1836. The first one in English—ironically named for a French player, as it was called the Philidorian—came two years later in 1838.

Conclusion

We haven't even come close to exhausting all the chess statistics you could find. For instance, if you go to the Chess.com Leaderboard, you can see who the top rated players at each time control from each country in the world.

Do you have a favorite chess stat that we didn't cover here? Let us know in the comments!