Is 35 too late to start playing chess`

35 is young. You have plenty of time.

This thread is based upon the OP being a beginner.  Playing against bots as a beginner is absolutely helpful.  I didn't suggest only playing against bots.  Holy smokes...

 

That a website with millions of members offers bots to play against undermines their claims about the value of their lessons. Bots stifle progress.

In contrast, playing set positions (endgames or tactical positions from books, and many games played from the point where a GM resigned) against engines at full strength is excellent training for chess players at all levels.

You guys are way overthinking this.  Bots/computers can be a helpful additional resource to whatever other methods someone uses.  That's all I was trying to say.

You play for the intellectual challenge. I play on the ipad app of chees.com. Most of the time if I concentrate, I play well and dont blunder. Since winning and losing have no consequence, except your ego...its fun and good for your brain. Even if I blunder and lose a piece, I keep fighting to see if I can get back....because fighitng and strategezing  is the fun. I sont play out normally if I blunder. The point is playing is the fun and learning...and there are endless aspects to learn..and you tube videos to watch. Gothamchess on YT is a very good teacher.

 

I can agree so long as bot play is kept to a minimum and never taken seriously. I see a lot of people posting their progress working their way up through a sequence of bots. That’s probably an ego boost, but it is not effective training. 

Bots are weakened engines that make deliberate unhumanlike errors. Learning to spot and exploit these errors is marginally useful. That is, it is not wholly without value, but it remains an inefficient way to learn.

As a brute force sparring partner, bots are useful sometimes.  I'm not suggesting not playing humans.

Fine and good.  I was just pushing back on the idea that someone a couple pages earlier alluded to --- that I was suggesting only playing against bots.  I would never suggest such a thing.

 

As I said above, playing the best engine you can find at full strength is useful. When I’m reading an endgame book, I will set up many positions and play them against Stockfish.

I did the same with a position from game 1 of the World Championship Match between José Capablanca and Emanuel Lasker. An Argentine newspaper reporting on the match said that Capablanca missed a win. Capablanca said their suggested move was one he rejected as too risky. Lasker gave some analysis where he claimed a defensive resource that refutes the newspaper’s claim.

I played the position against Stockfish several times, scoring a few wins and many draws. Yes, Capablanca might have won that game.

Yeah a computer will expose and punish your mistakes when a human might miss them.  Suggesting that that isn't helpful for development seems crazy to me.  Obviously, playing against humans is also important.

I understood your point.  It just blows my mind that you think playing against a brute force opponent that exposes your bad moves is a waste of time.

"Weteschnik says that he did not learn to play chess until he was 25. Nonetheless, he became an FM, which may be a record achievement for an adult learner in modern times." http://empiricalrabbit.blogspot.com/2012/11/martin-weteschnik.html

Weteschnik has written several chess books, at least one published by Quality chess: "Chess tactics from scratch - Understanding chess tactics"

I 100% disagree that a beginner cannot be helped by playing against a computer.  But it's ok for us to disagree.  All good, chill.

My guess is as good as anyone elses, here but I am getting re-acquainted with chess myself after a 20 years gap away from the board (at 36 YO). I don't expect to get a carreer out of it, but I enjoy improving. I keep an eye on the ELO that the site calculates, but try not to obsess with it. Something similar happens with martial arts (not that anybody asked about that) belt color can be used as a reference, but it is never the true objective of the art itself.  
So long as you know what you are looking to take out of chess I guess you'll enjoy the ride.

Regarding engines: their playing strength can be adjusted. Even on chess.com, you can play against the engine at whatever playing strength you feel matches up best with you.

This way you'll always have a training partner on hand, when needed. Can be especially useful when you want to experiment with certain lines or test out certain ideas.

I've learned many moves and concepts from training against bots - things that I now use in my games against humans.

When used wisely, engines/bots can be a helpful part of one's chess learning.

It's never too late to start playing chess. The first big goal is to reach 1000 rating. Most players can be there within a few months. For some it takes longer but I think anyone who wants to improve and keeps practicing can reach 1000 sooner or later.

2000 is far more difficult but not impossible.

 

I was getting crushed by an opponent the other day until he played Qc4 instead of the engine’s Qc6. Evaluation went from -3 (he had Black) to +3. I think it was a clerical error.

I'm 37 but started playing chess "seriously" a few years ago. I've probably played on and off now for about 3-4 years. I've yet to break a 1000 rating in any time format, but it's definitely a goal that feels more in reach to me now than it ever did a few years ago. 

Personally, I would forget about reaching a 2000 rating for now. I don't know about you, but I certainly don't have the time nor the inclination to learn how to play this game beyond simple tactics and the basic opening principles. You can try to learn theory if you like, but I think it's a waste of time at the lower levels. 400 elo Chess is pure chaos.

My advice is just to focus on enjoying the game. You will see progress over time, getting slightly better as you play. But unless you have a real talent for it, it's going to be slow going at your age (it is for me, anyway).

Disheartening to read some of the comments that are rather dismissive of the idea that a late starter can still become good at chess.

I’m 32, started chess 3 years ago rated 600 and am 2100 now. Whilst this is by no means great, even the prospect of an adult beginning in his 30s reaching 2k was deemed to be unrealistic by a few.
Not impossible in the slightest, it just takes a lot of deliberate study.

In my experience, the main issues with adult improvement is, generally speaking, the amount of actual time an adult tends to have to be able to seriously commit to learning AND playing chess, with all of the conflicts and commitments they typically have.

I started coaching adult improvers specifically about a year ago, and progress tends to be contingent on the amount of hours you can commit (no surprise!).
It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of noise online and on YouTube, filled with content and concepts that are practically useless and a waste of internal bandwidth trying to learn when there are much more pressing areas that give better bang for buck in terms of return on time investment.

But to conclude, you are definitely not to old at 35 to start playing chess and reach an expert level within a few years.

2000 rating is a realistic achievement. 

If you're willing to put in the work that is. 

Now the only time age matters when it comes to chess is when you want to make a career out of it. So getting to GM level, 2700+ and above, you need to start very young, like borderline toddler age,  otherwise you just wont be able to achieve gm level status.