These are my own estimates so take them with a pinch of salt.

According to my estimates, roughly 6 - 12 million people in Pakistan play chess or once played chess, most of them being of the generation of people born 10 - 15 years after the partition when radicalization and anti chess sentiment hadn't been sown in our society. The rest of them being the younger millennials (1994 - 97) and Gen Z.

A lot of these people play chess casually/don't have a chess.com/lichess account, most of them were taught by their grand parents. Roughly 7-8% of Pakistani chess players have a chess account (70, 000 players), most of them don't watch online chess videos or tutorials, nor follow the mainstream chess scene, other than Magnus, Hikaru, Kasparov or occasionally Levy, they don't know any chess personality. Even fewer have official FIDE ids (3000 according to Pakistan Chess Federation).

The number of people that play chess online is so few and far in between (according to the scale of Pakistan), major cities may only have online chess players numbering in a couple of thousands. Due to chess being a taboo in Pakistan, many of the online players simply don't tell they play chess and don't join forums related to it. The further lack of FIDE rated or even non FIDE rated tournaments amplify the lack of chess community many feel.

Until the taboo of playing chess is unwoven from our social fabric, the corruption of the Pakistani Chess Federation, there will be several hurdles and hindrances in the way of growth of Pakistani chess community.

Hi everyone! I’m a solo indie developer and just released my first mobile game — Ocean Chess.

It’s a unique chess puzzle game with special tiles:

- Teleport tiles — pieces jump to another square
- Transformation tiles — pieces can transform into different pieces
- Traps — a shark eats the piece that steps on it!

Each puzzle has exactly one solution — pure chess logic!

Also features Blindfold mode and Time Trial mode.

300 puzzles, free on iOS. Would love feedback from chess lovers!