a better way to rephrase the question is: Is playing a game that you enjoy a waste of time?
obviously there are more important things in life than a game, but if you have balance in your life and you are not ignoring an aspect of your life, chess is not a waste.
Exactly, if it is a hobby to you, if it makes you happy, if you are not "lost" in your life and you are enjoying your time playing it. It is perfectlly good hobby to have and it is well time spent. Aswell as crossword puzzles, Sudoku, Go, it does not matter. As almost in everything in life "too much of everything can be dangerous"
I don't study chess at all. I play because I have nothing else to do, and it's addictive.
I have no idea what a King's Indian gambit or any of that stuff is.
It's probably bad for me, because it causes a lot of aggravation.
But... after playing chess video games and monopoly just seem too fake or something.
Your post is a bigger waste of time.
Well it is about to find our purpose, I do not want to blame Chess it self here, because If I look back I wanted to let say play DOTA competitively, and its not DOTA's fault that I invested so much time in my teen years to it and failed. But my own. People can invest too much time to Poker and lose money, too much time to Chess and lose a decade, too much time to Sudoku and get fired from job or it is little things that happen when we get addicted. For example one day you want to play one more game and you wont say hi to your love one when he/she comes home, another day you could have dinner togheter but you wanted just keep grinding, it can add up without us to see it and relationships can fall off because our weakneses for addictions. Same can be applied to job lose (or problem to find one ) etc. Therefore one of the hardest thing in life to learn and master is definitelly balance. Balance in everything, in hobbies, in work, in exercise, in relationship, it will take time to find proper balance, but once we do, life juts get so much better
Ahh... searching for chess zen.
That is actually solid movie title right there 
So I read far too many posts about this topic. Mostly too bias opinions from angry players...
I agree! The only thing I'd like to add is that I'm fairly sure it increases your patience/attention span, which is a great thing in a world full of TikTok and Instagram, where our attention span shrinks every day.
So I read far too many posts about this topic. Mostly too bias opinions from angry players...
I agree! The only thing I'd like to add is that I'm fairly sure it increases your patience/attention span, which is a great thing in a world full of TikTok and Instagram, where our attention span shrinks every day.
That is definitelly true, I "kind of" mentioned it when I said positive side effects of chess. I still beleive though too many hours of chess as everything else where focus and patience is requirede a day would be actually contra productive. But if person play 1-2 hours, that is definitelly one of the benefits for sure!
with small breaks between games / studying of course
I remember reading an article called college is a waste of time and money probably better than doing that.
So I read far too many posts about this topic. Mostly too bias opinions from angry players...
I agree! The only thing I'd like to add is that I'm fairly sure it increases your patience/attention span, which is a great thing in a world full of TikTok and Instagram, where our attention span shrinks every day.
Depends entirely on how you play, there seems to be a lot of speed chess players on this site who can focus for over 5 - 10 min in a 30+ min game. Just look at every newbie thread with "I can't stop blundering and don't improve even if I play slower games... where is have over 15 - 20 min left on my clock when i lose".
But by trying to be patient and focus on you game, study and puzzles, at least on more minute than the day before, that will create good habits. Of course you can do that with almost any other activity so it is nothing specific to chess.
So I read far too many posts about this topic. Mostly too bias opinions from angry players. I would like to finally put a point of view from the Philosophical perspective. Chess will not make you smarter, do not spend hours and hours daily on studying chess lying to yourself that its justified to study chess because it makes you smarter. It is not true, its logic applies only on the chess board, no in the real life. But it does not mean you can not be studying chess. Chess is a game, not a sport, and as long it does not interfere your daily responsibilities (going to work, studying for school, exercising, avoiding doing chores, starting to be neglect about your hygiene...) as long as you have it under the control. It is completelly fine. If you chose to play Chess as a hobby because you like it, well that is the best reason why to continue in doing it. For me for example I play chess because I like the game. I like how I can simply take couple of minutes a day and just fully dive into a game with maximum focus. But I am not going to get good at it I established it at the begining. If I have time to study I study mathematics, languages I study programming and the most important I read books. So I play Chess in total 4-6 hours a week since this is my healthy limit to it. If lets say you have only One hour in your day (family, work, life) I wouldnt recommend chess because its easy to be absorbed with it and get frustrated that you are not good enough so it will make you study it harder to get better at it. But at the end, it doesnt matter if you are rating 1000 or 1800, you will not make any money out of it (if you of course do not want to become profesional, in that case this is not artical for pros wanna bes) it will not make you smarter, it will not make you healtier (playing chess regular hours will, playing it 4+ more hours a day will not) . If you want to get "chess positibe side effects" one hour of playing and studying it a day is enough, anything past that time, its on you. If you have limited amount of time, be carefull how you manage it, we have only one life, be responsible. If you will be 50+ what would you rather have? 20 000 hours invested in Chess and be 1800-2100 rating player or a smart person with great career, nice familly, know multiple languages, multiple skills, have multiple valid friendships. Choice is yours, do what you enjoy in your life and if it s chess and you manage to study it a lot and still be sucesfull in different areas in live, that is amazing, but for everyone mortal out there, watch out, because Chess can be very addictive and time consuming, and it can be very dangerous addiction as well.
In conclusion:
I aswell manage to found in these topics counter replies like: "still better than watching TV and drinking in bars" Of course it is better, but this opinnion focus more on comparing studying high amount of hours of chess (which is considered focused time investment) with different areas. We can not compare it with different addictions, like TV binge watching, because this one is little bit more trickier than others and easier to justify.