Can I still become "good" at chess?

And probably after you start with a coach or playing against strong players at that club you will improve very fast, in the future it won´t be that fast.

I agree... especially with the last sentence.

Think long and hard about spending that time on chess instead of so many other things. Unfortunately the cliche is true, youth is often wasted on the young. If you don't reflect thoroughly on your path at this time in life, you will likely regret your time spent at this age, just like many old geezers do of their own lives. I'm only in my mid-20s but that doesn't stop me from having regrets of some of my time spent during your age (though it wasn't on chess). Cherish it in whatever way you can! If you decide to pursue chess, you better love it with all your heart.

Of course anything is possible.  Join a club or start a club.  Find a good coach that who you want to learn under.  Move if you have to in order to become that coach's student.  If you find your progress halting, reassess what you are doing and make changes to your game plan.

join a chess club. make sure they play in a chess league. get to know as many people playing as possible. learn as much as poss with mentle study of the game. like openings middlegame and end play. the only thing you need to do is spend time working hard on learning also have a day or 2 off a week and enjoy life good luck.

You said you wanted to be a real professional some day right? well you need alot of money for all the expenses involved air fair, hotel fees, lodging and food, any professional GM or IM coach who trains you and puts hours and hours of his or her time into you isn't going to work for peanuts and will want to be well paid.

Imagine your at a tournament and your facing this guy it's very quiet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-14194,_Emanuel_Lasker.jpg

He's staring into your eyes and the very depths of your soul for 2-5 hours he is going to come after you with everything he's got when your feeling exhausted and tired probably had enough you'll look up wearily at some point of the game and he'll still be there not tired not flinching one inch just as determined to win as when the game started.

Players like him are all buisness and very,very serious about what they do think about it.

is it worth joining a club for a 17 year old who 'wants to be professional someday'? Yes. Do clubs offer courses? Some do and some don't. First look for your local club. 

But more to the heart of your post. You say you 'did puzzles for two weeks and feel that you still want to do them'! Great. You've found something you enjoy doing. That is very different from becoming a professional. To consider being a professional you'd probably have to do puzzles and the like for ten years, not 2 weeks. And still, as others have pointed out, you will likely not become professional, but you will certainly become better than now. 

Of course you can

Can you become a GM? Realistically, I think that's too much to hope for, but it's not impossible. You'll find examples of people older than you who did it.

Either way, you should stop worrying about it, and start studying/playing. That way you'll find out for yourself, not just what other people think. No one knows what you can do except you, and then only after you put in the effort. 

Edit: You asked if you can become "good", which is very subjective. But a lot of people would probably say that with (a lot) of effort, you can become an expert or master. That might be enough to let you earn a bit of money as a chess professional.

And a question: Thinking about the time it would take to become a chess professional, and the money you can make (not a lot).... Would it make more sense to invest most of your time in a different career, and keep chess as a hobby? You can still set goals (1600, 1800 etc) and be a "good" chess player for enjoyment.

Recent examples of people who take up chess at 17 and go on to become World Class players?

"Can" is very different than "should".

Someone mentioned that Victor Korchnoi started when he was 18. I'll bet if you check his record, he did not stay at a rating of 1400 very many weeks after he learned to move the pieces. My guess (and it is a guess) is that he was better after a month of chess experience than I am after several years of studying tactics. Natural aptitude is a very large component of becoming a 2000+ player. And to become any kind of professional, you need to be higher than that.

Yes, "anything is possible". But it is also foolish to waste enormous amounts of time on something just because everyone says "the sky's the limit". For some of us (I mean me) maybe 1600 is the limit. And that's ok. 

yes, and OP is not at any risk of investing enormous amounts of time yet. He has spent two weeks doing puzzles and finds he likes them. Two weeks is nothing, nada, zero, or close to it, in terms of chess education. You just stuck the tip of your pinky in the water, that's all. 

One final note on Korchnoi: (from wikipedia).  He apparently did NOT start when he was 18, but when he was 5.

Korchnoi was born on 23 March 1931 in Leningrad, USSR, to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother.^[3]

He learned to play chess from his father at the age of five. In 1943, he joined the chess club of the Leningrad Pioneer Palace, and was trained by Abram Model, Andrei Batuyev, and Vladimir Zak. In 1947, he won the Junior Championship of the USSR, with 11½/15 at Leningrad, and shared the title in 1948 with 5/7 at Tallinn, Estonia.^[5

Since memorization must play a big role I would be interested in how many moves players memorize from the opening until they start developing their own plans and how many moves you memorize in openings you know well.

I don't memorize openings and lines. Look at some of my games. I'm following the rules Magnus Carlsen uses. No rules at all...

Jion_Wansu hat geschrieben:

I don't memorize openings and lines. Look at some of my games. I'm following the rules Magnus Carlsen uses. No rules at all...

So you think Carlsen doesn't memorize any openings? No one can play all the openings which took centuries to develope correctly without memorizing.

can I still become goof at chess. 

"letsplaychess1996 wrote:

Hi everyone. I just wanted to hear you opinion about something that is causing sleepless nights to me. I am now 17 and I am still a beginner at chess, but I really want to improve at it and be able to play professional some day. I started playing about 2 years ago, but I could and can not concentrate much because I am currently finishing school. But I feel like I don´t want to do anything but playing chess. I don´t know how to express myself any better, but I think chess is like life."

If your goal is to become totally confused, you did the right thing by throwing it out onto the World Wide Web.

Errrr. I started the piano a year ago. If I put in 10k hours I am fairly/pretty/mostly sure I will be on concert-pianist level. I've put in like 400 hours right now (probably less) and I've tremendous progress.

Just a week ago I had a tough time dealing with a computer chess program, now that I've learned basic openings and forks/bishop technique, I have advanced very much, more than in the last 3 months.

It's hard work combined with the right attitude and technique. Usually hard work should find the right technique as well.

10k hours of piano would be about 5 hours a day, 360 days a year, for about six years. That would definitely not get you to concert pianist level unless you were astoundingly talented. Not just hard work and 'right technique'. You would have to have astounding innate talent, astounding ability to learn astoundingly quickly, have an astounding ear and astounding physical coordination capabilities to start with which for the most part cannot be trained but are innate; you either have them or you don't. Classical piano is something I know about; much more than chess. 

Of course you experience tremendous progress starting a year ago and putting in 400 hours. You were a complete beginner! Of course you had trememdous progress. Progress is not what makes someone a concert pianist; its accomplishment, not progress. To be a concert pianist you have to know a tremendous amount of material, plus have the innate talent, and put in the hours. Hours and progress alone won't make you a concert pianist. 

can you explain how thats a bit scary i dont see the connection?