A quick search for the keyword "chess" on Google.com's new trend search page gives some interesting results. Google trends provides information not only on how often a keyword was used in internet searches on Google.com but also from which counties these searches originated and even correlates the results with the number of news articles on the same topic.

Both India and the Philippines share the top spot for the most searches for "chess" between 2004 and 2006 (unfortunately, the data does not go further back). India is a country with a huge population with internet access becoming more and more available in recent years. However, most of the other top spots in the popularity of chess searches are taken by countries with a much smaller population: the Philippines, Norway, South Africa, Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Romania occupy ranks 2 to 8. The United States, a developed nation with a population of close to 300 million people is only on the 9th place.

I have to admit that I am a bit surprised by these results. I am aware that even though the US has a large population with abundant internet access it is not exactly considered as a chess country. However, the nation that dominated competitive chess for decades, Russia, does not show up in the top 10 (Singapore is no. 10). A speculative explanation for the rankings is the age distribution of the population. Developing countries tend to have a higher percentage of young people which tend to use the internet more than older people. This theory would indirectly imply that US chess is an "old man's game". Opinions on the reason behind the Google trends data on chess are very welcome!

Another interesting point is the ongoing dominance of Bobby Fischer in chess, even more than three decades after his famous world championship match against Boris Spassky in 1972. The two biggest spikes in the amount of chess news from 2004-2006 coincide with his detention in Japan and his move to Ireland. Only Kasparov's retirement in March 2005 had a similar impact. However, there was also a significantly increased amount of chess news during the successful showing of the Delphian School Chess Club at the Whitford Middle School Tournament...

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