Purpose
To collect analyses about the chess olympiads and other team tournaments in chess.
Top10 country average rating (Fide) vs average country rating at the olympiad
2018 Batumi
I tried to write this article quickly in reddit, but reddit didn't accept the content, so I went to my actual best article platform, wikidot.
Nowadays (2018-09-26) is the time of the 43rd chess olympiad.
It happens from time to time that for several reason this or that strong player won't participate to the olympiad for his national team. For example the current world chess champion and FIDE #1 in the ratings, Magnus Carlsen, does not participate because he is preparing for the world chess championship match in November. Putting that event over the national team event.
The question is, how much is the "potential of a country" is brought to the olympiad? Compared to the best 10 country players, a positive elo difference means that most of the very top players are there.
In my opinion a strong nation cannot just rely on few individuals. A strong nation should have a relatively large pool of talents. This is valid not only for chess but for whatever team competition.
Therefore using the fide average for the top10 active players is a good indicator of the potential that a nation has if few top players decline their participation to the olympiad (or FIDE world team championship).
So let's compare how things are using the FIDE rating for countries of this month (at the moment I am unaware whether there are archives for comparisons in the past).
Sources:
Nation | Fide top10 avg sept 2018 | 43rd Chess Olympiad Avg | Difference Olympiad - top10 fide |
---|---|---|---|
USA | 2701 | 2772 | 71 |
RUS | 2744 | 2764 | 20 |
CHN | 2710 | 2756 | 46 |
AZE | 2674 | 2748 | 20 |
IND | 2664 | 2724 | 60 |
UKR | 2672 | 2698 | 26 |
FRA | 2642 | 2688 | 46 |
ARM | 2644 | 2688 | 44 |
ENG | 2634 | 2688 | 54 |
ISR | 2627 | 2676 | 49 |
POL | 2639 | 2673 | 34 |
HUN | 2649 | 2673 | 24 |
NED | 2637 | 2671 | 34 |
GEO1 | 2597 | 2637 | 40 |
CZE | 2591 | 2633 | 42 |
GER | 2618 | 2628 | 10 |
BLR | 2568 | 2615 | 47 |
CRO | 2579 | 2609 | 30 |
PER | 2544 | 2602 | 58 |
ARG | 2546 | 2600 | 34 |
ROU | 2568 | 2600 | 32 |
TUR | 2558 | 2600 | 42 |
IRI | 2544 | 2599 | 55 |
ESP | 2610 | 2596 | -14 |
GRE | 2555 | 2595 | 40 |
SLO | 2530 | 2592 | 62 |
VIE | 2505 | 2576 | 71 |
CAN | 2500 | 2575 | 75 |
BRA | 2551 | 2567 | 16 |
MDA | 2461 | 2564 | 103 |
LAT | 2501 | 2564 | 63 |
SWE | 2537 | 2556 | 19 |
CUB | 2561 | 2555 | -6 |
ITA | 2534 | 2554 | 20 |
AUT | 2503 | 2552 | 49 |
UZB | 2532 | 2547 | 15 |
KAZ | 2494 | 2546 | 52 |
NOR | 2575 | 2543 | -32 |
SUI | 2506 | 2542 | 36 |
EGY | 2476 | 2536 | 60 |
AUS | 2491 | 2523 | 32 |
GEO2 | 2597 | 2516 | -81 |
MKD | 2465 | 2514 | 49 |
ISL | 2502 | 2513 | 11 |
SRB | 2566 | 2509 | -57 |
So it seems that most of the countries are bringing a potential that is even better than the average of their top10 players. I would presume the same happened in the past, but I can confirm this only using past data, not available at the moment.