Portugal does have history of Chess:
1212 Ferrand of Portugal hit his wife Jeanne over a game of chess.
Look at some of the artwork from the period, there may be a chess set
in a painting.
Kasparov in his My Chess Predecessors indicated that Arizonia had no Chess facilities. Maybe or maybe not.
Where I came from was NY. NY up to the 70's had more than several clubs,
Book store row including more than several Chess book stores.
Chess in the schools and Chess in the parks.
Probably most of our GMs from the period were born or lived in NYC.
(Reshevsky lived in Monsey). Two magazines: Chess Review and Chess Life. Also NYC was the home of USCF for years (until last year).
NYC was the home of the NY 24 and NY 27.
But later Mayors of NYC did not support chess.
NYC was also the home of Dover and Tartan books.
(Dovers cost between $1.25 to $3.75) Maybe one or two at $5.
Tartan books were on Spielmann, Euwe, Alekhine, Capablanca, and
printed Nimzovitch's two books including Hypermodern Chess.
The Four Continent Book Store in Manhattan was a Soviet owned book store.
(Yes Soviet owned, that is owned by the USSR), and sold Russian chess
magazines. During the 60's the NY Times had a chess column written by
I.A. Horowitz. During the newspaper strike in the Mid-60's, Horowitz went on NBC Sunday News Show and read the chess column out loud.
And of course NYC has Wall Street. Why Wall Street in this post. More than several U.S. masters who lived in NYC originally were Wall St. Brokers.
I.A. Horowitz, Seidman, Pincus, and dozens of others. Pincus was chess player, Wall St. Broker, and worked for the Guppy family in their pet shop.
It was alleged that the Indiana Jones films were based on Pincus. Although that may not be true. Every plant in NY Botanical Gardens in Bronx, was brought there by Arthur Pincus.

Dublin - Rep. Of Ireland

I didnt say that Poker and Chess have the luck in common. I totally agree with you, that poker is a game of luck - in the short run! But in the long run you can win if your strategies and skills are better than the strategies from your opponents. That's where I see similarities: to have a good strategy and more skills than your opponent. And you only get these skills if you practice the game!
Sorry, that was offtopic. I'm still from Germany

Ah, and thanks for the welcome

Newbie

They have similarities, I agree, but there are big differences as well. You say that in the long run you can win if your strategies are better. That's probably true, since some people made millions in several tournaments, and that can't be pure chance. But there is still a big difference in results between chess in the long run and poker in the long run. When a rookie plays chess with a Grandmaster, he wins 0 out of 100 games, while if a rookie plays a poker pro, he can still win maybe 20-30 games. In chess, skills guarantee you a win; in poker they don't.

Poker: Short message. One of the chess websites folded. The people who ran the site, went into poker.
Everybody is a gambler.

India!

I'm from Canada and specifically southwestern Ontario just outside of Windsor (across the river from Detroit).

Crash

Utrecht, close to Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Near Breda, the Netherlands.

Near Cleveland Ohio