TALE OF THE TAPE- MALAYSIA VS SAN MARINO

First, let’s measure/ compare in size

Country Size
Malaysia 329,845 km2
San Marino 61 km2

Population
Malaysia 28,000,000
San Marino 30,000

Maybe the figure above is too one sided, to make it simple, in term of size 14 San Marinos equal to our one Perlis. For population, 8 San Marinos equal to our one Perlis.

Too make it even simpler, all they have is the population of Maybank’s staff.

OK forgive me. Maybe above comparison is not accurate, our Singapore neighbour might disagree if we want to measure strength with size or population. So let’s measure in pure chess power


Fide’s world rank
Malaysia 77
San Marino 128

Olympiad seeding
Malaysia 86
San Marino 118

Fide’s number of active players
Malaysia 163
San Marino 1

Fide’s number of inactive players
Malaysia 269
San Marino 7

Guess from above, there is no need for me to go for the overkill and compare the numbers of titled players each country possessed (though from the list of their players I suspect San Marino got more CMs compared to Malaysian two CMs) 

Third, let’s measure in chess duels history

In Moscow 1994 we met San Marino and we won 4-0
In Elista 1998 we met San Marino and won 4-0 again
We always met San Marino when Olympiad is played in Russia but the big question here is whether we can always achieve the 4-0 result.

The only advantage San Marino has against us is they have 5 playing players while so far we only have 4 playing players.