When is it too late to start playing (and getting good at) chess?

Chess is an enjoyable, frustrating, creative, heart breaking, exhilerating game - the age you start doesn't matter - you will experience all of the damned things in time anyway...  

Realize that if you become only barely proficient as far as serious players (tournament players) go, even just 1400, that's still enough to destroy most casual players you'll ever meet. I once had a class-A player tell me that a 1600 was a "decent amateur"...1600 will wipe the floor with anyone who hasn't studied chess seriously, and is still a far cry from master. 

You can get plenty good starting in your mid 20s.

Never

My response is to look to the word of language. I believe (without much empirical evidence, just my belief I admit) that learning chess is not unlike learning languages. I contend that chess positions are semiotic puzzles and as such language learning offers a real insight into how we learn chess. 

If I'm right about that, then looking to the world of language learning, we find that very smart people who start learning a new language in their 20s or later almost never become indistinguishable from native speakers, even when they are fully and completely immersed in the language and culture they're trying to learn. 

However, put a younger person in the same situation, and not only will they become indistinguishable from a native speaker, they will do so rather quickly.  

I'm beginning, albeit reluctantly, to find Kingpatzer's arguments compelling...

Sorry, I'll try to stop making sense :)

It's too late when you have terrible memory, no longer remembering which move you disregarded two seconds earlier. 

Let's not start making any hasty promises we can't keep!

HMMMMM....

OMNOMOMNOMOMNOMOMNOMOMNOMOMNOMOMNOM

Some very interesting discussion here! =D

Honestly, I kinda regret that I didn't take up chess earlier. Maybe that's because I was put off by my losses in the only 2 OTB games I've ever had and against Chessmaster when I was a kid. Well, I'll try to make up as much as I can. (Thinking of joining the chess club in my city anytime soon)

Just a head's up, some high-ranking chess players can be assholes.  I played against one of the top ten players in Maine one time.  I lost horribly, but afterwards he made me feel like I was an inferior and that he was doing me a favor by lowering himself and allowig me to play against him.

I hear ya, just because you are good at chess doesn't mean you aren't a (expletives deleted by moderator). Being great at chess doesn't automatically make you a genius either. A high aptitude in one area often comes at the expense of lacking in others. Like social aptitude for example.

People who start at 25 have a chance to become a reasonably strong club player. However, I don't know any GMs who haven't been playing since childhood/teen years. I have read those old stories about Chigorin/Steinitz, but that was another era and another standard of play...Back then there were no pros.

I find that after 1900 it's getting too late for me to play a good game. I'm really a morning person.

One of my former Chess instructors started Chess at 21. He is 39 and he peaked last year at 2214 FIDE, which is more or less 2260 USCF. The trick? He plays and teaches Chess for a living. Teaching a subject is one of the best ways to master it. Well, this and the private lessons of a GM.

Of course, there's good, and then there's good...

Exactly. becoming a very strong club player, even an expert, is something that seems to me to be well within the capabilities of most anyone regardless of what level they start play at. I've met such folk. 

But I've never even heard of someone learning the game as an adult and becoming a master, and everything I know about mastering other subjects leads me to strongly believe it's not possible. Maybe somewhere there's some FM or IM who started learning the game at 25 or 30, but if so, they are a one-in-a-million fluke.  

See post #40.  But when I said good, I wasn't referring to mere masters.