How long have you been playing chess?

I learned the pieces when i was around four, but didn't start "playing" until last september

Learned how to play as a kid, but playing OTB Tourneys since '95

18 years for me. Never joined a club, only ever entered 1 tournament and that was online, also ongoing.

 That is incredible. I only picked the game up about 3-4 years ago - I'd need to play until I was 83ish to match this achievement.

It's been 32 years 9 months 3 weeks and 2 days.

That's 1,034,467,200 seconds that I'll never get back.

Time well spent- who needs them back!?

Since 4th grade.

been playing regularly 2 years now.before that....only once in a blue moon

Oh man, I feel old.

I have been playing since I was a Junior in High School in 1981.

Fischer had finished with Larsen and was looking forward to Petrosian when I entered my first USCF tournament. The old guys then could reminisce about Capablanca and Alekhine the way we now do with Bobby.

I'm not exactly sure when I learned the game. It was before the Spassky-Fischer match but not by much. I guess I've actively played about half of the last forty years. The better half.

53 years!! 

 Do you ever meet anyone that had attended a tournament with Capablanca? Or anyone that had seen him at Manhattan chess club?

I probably would have but I'm on the west coast where not much was going on in chess while the east coast and NYC were the hotbeds.

My very first USCF opponent was 78 years old and had been playing chess for at least 30 years before I showed up on the scene. He may have faced some noted masters in simuls but I'm not sure. One guy he played for sure and also a guy I met was our local master, and eventually GM, Dake, the fellow who beat Alekhine in Pasadena 1932, in a Caro that has been frequently anthologized. This was at a time that Alekhine was losing very few games in a 5 year span, so well done on his part.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1012895

Dake also played Capa in simuls as a young master, one time deciding to match the Cuban's speed and just blitz out their simul game right there. Capa won, despite Dake's considerable talent (Dake would win NYC blitz tournaments with perfect scores). Well no one could match Capa at blitz--he was peerless in his time.

So I got an almost direct connection to Capa. I wish I'd heard some stories from Dake's mouth about Capa and Alekhine though. Denker's book has a few about Dake brushing shoulders with the luminaries of chess, one in which he was beating the paste out of Alekhine in speed pots (with Fine) and Alekhine, then WC, lost his temper in an outburst, so Dake soothed him a bit. Unlike Capa, Alekhine had no great talent for blitz.

That very first 78 year old opponent? He lived to 101 and played his last tourney aged, believe it or not, 99 years.  His last rating was 1335. When he faced me he was a 1700 and he beat me. Nice guy and no doubt had a lot to teach me had I stuck around and been more receptive.

There was a recent entry in Winter's chess notes about the longest span of years achieved taking in the earliest birth date of an opponent and then the latest birth date of an opponent. The biggest number seems to be 117 years for no less than near-master level players.

Well, he was born in 1892 and I'm still kicking and certainly could play some young punk in the coming decades. As a non-master I'm not included in Winter's game, but maybe I'd be the winner. I wonder if any of the resident veterans have likewise played in an official tournament someone so old when they were young .

6 months, and cant stop playing

I used to play a lot when I was younger ( back in elementary-school and high-school ), but for some reason I stopped playing. Chess kind of vanished from my life. I got an odd jolt of inspiration the other day, and decided to begin playing again. I even went and bought Chessmaster XI - The Grandmaster Edition for PC to help me begin again. Hopefully this is the start of a life-long hobby. :)

Does your little sister still play? 

 So how long is that?

 Might not be any clubs when you get old.