At chess.com,nobody thinks chess is a waste of time!
Why do people think chess is a waste of time?
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Chess is a cheap hobby, better than vices. I am addicted to it and spend a lot of time playing and studying. I'm not a pro player by a large margine, so people might think I'm wasting time. In the end it's not a waste for someone like me, coz I'm doing something I love.
Stratego and Monopoly are faint lights compared to Chess. "Risk" seems a closer coimparison. I wish I knew how to play Go.
There is one compare/contrast notion widely held among folks at chess.com that should not go unchallenged: "Checkers is the dumb cousin of chess". What makes this notion easier to challenge is the secondary corrollary: " A good Chess player would be an excellent Checkers player". I wish Chess people put that corollary to the test by actually playing a "good" (not even excellent) Checkers player. Chess player is going to lose because the assumed "transferable superiors skills" are not so transferable and actually, not all that superior
It isn’t a waste of time, but as long as it does not affect your life it is good. Besides who do people think they are telling us what to do with our spare time?
Nikolai- People telling us what to do with our spare time isn't a complaint about the choice to play chess, it is a complaint that the time during which we play chess is not actually "spare" time. The point of view of the usual complainer is that the time being used for chess is the complainer's time. The most typical is "Participate in family activities rather than staying up in your room playing chess"
I only got one thing to say to anybody that says it's a waste of time..... Get on out of it & go watch ya TV soaps you gold fishes 
Those are probably the people who are eating cheesy poofs playing mind numbing video games for 15 hours and making their way to 550 pounds of lard on their bones
I can waste time. I have little better things to do. For small people, the world is small. Only 64 squares.
mrrussryan1951- On the contrary, there are people who think that chess is a waste of time, regardless of the time you choose to play/study it. For example, my dad is a PE teacher and everytime someone asks what sport I do and he has to tell them “He plays chess” you can visibly see the pity in their face as they think what a waste it is.
Chess may be time-consuming, buts only the serious ones, I don't see why all these people say that chess is a waste of time, you can treat chess really fast, like bullet or lighting, and it will be fun to see all the blunders and dumb stuff that will happen in your fun game. Chess is supposed to be fun too, not just competitive. Also, chess is not a waste of brains, like some people say, its actually help you notice things like tactics that you might not have noticed before.
Think of it like this, chess is actually a very good board game that is actually very strategic, why do people not say games like Stratego and Monopoly say its a waste of brains? You literally in Stratego, almost all the troops only move 1 square and it gets quite boring eventually.
I see chess as a very fun board game unlike all those chess haters out there.