How many chess players are there in the world?

Where does 605 million come from?

The number spread in August 2012 through a press release from a company called Agon. That same year, FIDE, the world chess federation, had given Agon the rights to organize and commercialize the world championship. The press release said that 605 million adults play chess regularly.

Behind it was a survey that Agon had commissioned from the polling company YouGov. But the survey didn't cover the whole world. It was run online in the spring and summer of 2012 in five countries, among people who had signed up for YouGov's panels. A player meant someone who played weekly, monthly, or at some point in the past year. The press release doesn't give the exact questions.

Together the five countries add up to a little over 192 million. How that became 605 million for the whole world isn't in the press release. Agon's founder, Andrew Paulson, said instead that FIDE had already given the figure of 605 million a few years earlier, in a submission to the International Olympic Committee, and that he commissioned the survey to see whether it was true.

At a press conference in Istanbul a month later, Paulson said he hadn't believed the number, because nobody would tell him where it came from. After the surveys, though, he found 600 million entirely credible, perhaps even low. Chess.com later wrote 600 million, said FIDE put the number forward in 2012, and said it was extrapolated from YouGov's survey. We haven't found any account of how 605 million was actually worked out.

The answer also depends on how you ask. When YouGov asked 1,105 American adults in June 2024, 4 percent said they play regularly and 17 percent said they play occasionally.

What can be counted

Here are numbers that someone has actually counted. None of them is the number of chess players, but each one tells you something.

FIDE's list includes only people who have played classical games in rated events and who have a rating of at least 1400. If you play at home, at school, or online, you aren't on it. What the numbers mean is explained under What is a good chess rating?

The Swedish Chess Federation has a lot of young members: a little over 43,000 are 25 or younger. Each person counts once.

Accounts aren't the same as players. One person can have several, and an account can sit unused. Chess.com calls them members and doesn't say how they are counted. The Swedish federation's 2025 annual report says Chess.com reports two million Swedes with accounts, and points out that some have more than one.

Lichess, another big site, gives no number of accounts on its about page. Both say how many games are played each day: Chess.com more than ten million, Lichess more than five million. Those are their own figures.

So what's the answer?

A great many, but nobody has counted them. If someone gives you an exact number for the whole world, it's an estimate, and it's worth asking whose it is and how it was made.

You can become one of them today: play a game, read the rules, or take the first lesson.