What age is too late to become a good chess player?

Easiest when you're a kid but you can still become great

Optimism is an amazing thing. Optimism is kind of like "faith" applied to common tasks! Realistically, if you want to become a 'good' chess player then you better have a proclivity for logic and start when you're about 2 or 3. If not then you're probably not going to get anywhere. It's like I tell my chess students, if you want to become the next dictator of Germany, you probably need to be a great military leader, a great politician, and be GERMAN!! If you're not German then you're most likely not going to become the leader of Germany...likewise if you're not intelligent and not very logically minded and not familiar with chess by age 3 at the latest, then chess is not for you!

I'm 59 years old. I played chess when I was a kid and then maybe played 20 or so games against friends until a year and a half ago. Now chess is an obsession with me. I find my personal limitation these days is speed. I am totally crap at rapid and blitz. But I can hold my own to a reasonable extent over the board in one or two hour games.

There's no doubt that elite chess is a young man's game. But I think it should be possible for almost anyone to get to 2200 or so if they dedicate themselves to it, build an effective opening repertoire, study endgame patterns and develop their tactical skills. It definitely takes discipline and hard work. It may take longer when you're older.

am 33 years now started playing chess in 2012 and i just clocked 2100 FIDE last week

@Kusokosla: OTB rating?

#11: You can make that without being German. If you are Austrian, you actually have better odds.

#22 I meant, verdammt.

@Sandstad

Have no idea, but I played a few times a friend of mine who is 1950+ OTB officially in actual tournaments, and I got the better of him when I was about 300 points lower than I am now in bullet and blitz.

I would definitely like to take part in live official tournament(s), but I don’t even know where that would take place. I guess I gotta google it or ask a friend of mine. And if it turns out I’m 1400 OTB I’d be fine with it, but I don’t see that happenening based on how little I study now and what my games VS titled players on here feel like to me. Thinking about lessons too, I wonder what a chess lesson is like. Never took one.

I started pretty young and got NM at age 13

@RoikkuvaUpseeri

The only people who differentiate Germans from Austrians are either blinded by "Allied Politics" or come from families unworthy of German ancestry!