Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Hundreds of millions people

Chess is played by hundreds of millions people [sic] worldwide (according to Yougov, the British market research firm)
Not so much "according to YouGov", more "according to Dylan Loeb McClain", who made the claim writing the other day for AGON. (Or, if you prefer, for Ilya Merenzon.)

OK, it's not the full 605 million, but I'm going to include it in our series, because it's still a ludicrous estimate - and one just as specious, since, as regular readers know, it's not "according to YouGov" at all.

It's just another made-up, and not made up by them.

[Thanks to our informant]
[605 million index]

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I tracked down Kirsan saying 500 million chess lovers in 2004, though they were "other" than the "60 million amateur and professional chess followers"

http://web.archive.org/web/20040818203220/http://www.ameinfo.com/news/Detailed/43640.html

Anonymous said...

Chess.Com is now hypeing they get "a million" engaged fans to their "Death Matches"

"Want to support top grandmasters like Hikaru Nakamura and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, and get your company name in front of a million engaged chess fans?"

https://www.chess.com/news/sponsor-a-grandmaster-blitz-battle-2916

Reality: more like low thousands actually view.

ejh said...

Out of interest, where are you getting "low thousands" from?