Is chess popular in the USA?

Question

Is chess popular in the USA?

Answer 1

Yes, my seven year old has played since he was 5.

Answer 2

Actually, yes. They even have extremely important competitions with the best. Depending on the school, chess programs might be provided along with an after school club. I began to learn chess at a local library when the program was introduced. It proved to be very productive.

Answer 3

The popularity of chess can be seen in many ways:

Squirrelchess.com has a blurb about how popular it is compared to other contries using Google Trends as a data source. India and Philippines have us checkmated when it comes to chess searches.

http://squirrelchess.com/cms/blog/gettin...

The US is currently ranked 8th in the number of searches using the word chess.

NY City is ranked 7th out of cities.

For some reason Norwegian is the most popular language that chess is searched under....Nothing to do in the winter, I guess.

The US Chess Federation garners around 80,000 members. These are folks that are willing to shell out money for a magazine and can play in tournaments. I assume many of these players are scholastic and receive free memebership.

However, if you visit Au-Bon-Pain in Harvard Square in Cambridge Massachusetts or Central Park in NY you will find a lively population of Chess fanatics.

Having won 22 rated chess tournaments in my life...I can tell you Chess is not dead in the US.

Some would judge a game on how easy it is to make a living at it. I would ask a hustler in Central Park for the answer to that...I can tell you that there are very few tournament chess players that can make a living at it at least in the US.

While you can usually find a chess club at your nearest library, high school or university most of the chess games these days are being played online.

It is hard to deny the benefits of chess on ones ability to problem solve...especially linear problems.

So, my answer to your question is that Chess is not popular enough in the US but it is still part of our culture.  The average Joe on the street knows what the game is and can probably tell you that it has pawns and those horsy things.

:-)

Answer 4

Yes.  When I was a kid, back in the 90s (ok I'm not really old, but not a kid anymore) there used to be chess tournaments at the local public libraries and they used to be pretty full.  I'm not sure if it is still as popular in that format with advent of the internet I would imagine the majority of players are online now.  

Answer 5

I think that chess goes through phases of popularity.  Right now I don't see as much interest in the game, but there are still a lot of players on the Internet.  You don't see it being played in public except in selected cities, but you can always find a board and pieces.  It is firmly in the cannon of good games here which do not leave production.

Answer 6

Yes, it is popular and played by many people including me. Checkmate☺

Answer 7

yes

Answer 8

definatily  

Answer 9

I've played forever. There are huge tournaments all over the place. So I would assume there is a rather large following to hold these tournaments.