I suck at chess

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I've always sucked at chess, even as a little kid being trained. I could never get that game.

Some people just aren't able to play strategy based games.
There are other games you are probably good at.

Chess is one of the most complicated and hard to master games there is; it takes ALOT of time and practice to get good at it. Slow progress is not abnormal.

Chess seems on the surface to be very much about logic, but a large part of being good at it is the ability to predict your opponent's moves. I play relatively well, but I can't predict my opponent's moves. I usually end up making a Xanatos Gambit to deal with this.

I had a strong interest in chess for a while but eventually gave up on it entirely. You need to devote a stupid amount of your life to it if you want to be even slightly good at it, and I wasn't quite that obsessed.

Another problem with chess is that the openings have been so over-studied and over-analyzed that the first twenty or so moves are more about memorization than skill. That's why if I ever play chess again, it'll only be Chess 960, a.k.a. random chess, in which the pieces on the back row are placed randomly to ensure that neither player can have an advantage by memorizing those played-to-death openings.

"Chess is a sea where the elephant may bathe and the gnat may drink," is an Indian proverb I've seen in at least one chess book. It isn't enough to memorize opening moves, it is vitally important to know why a move is being made, what plan it is a part of. Don't get a book too far ahead of where you are now--if you can browse a page or two at a bookstore, follow it, and learn from it that might be a book you want to buy and study. A tutor can also help.

"A Forrest Gump of Chess"

Like any recreation, if you don't enjoy it then don't play it. There are very few openings that go that deep without any latitude for preference moves rather than forcing moves unless you are trying to play at master level. It isn't necessary to study openings that you can never be forced to play. People who enjoy playing now at the "shark" level also enjoyed at when they were at the "guppy" or "flounder" level or they wouldn't have stuck with it, much less made the effort to improve.

I'm not even good at checkers. Not only that, but it increases my boredom rather than relieves it.

In fact, even though playing board games was something of a big family tradition with my parents, the games frequently bore me, no pun intended. Like Monopoly. We used to play it when I was a little girl and I'd get bored, cranky and lucky if I didn't start bawling. It was only really because I was amused by the miniature game pieces that I'd play. I really like Charades, though, but it's been forever since I got to play that.

My brother liked chess and used to play it with our cousin when we were younger. Is there something wrong with getting bored by such things? Does it mean you're not smart?

For me chess are to abstract. While I love playing wargames, I can't deal why goddamn cavalry in chess (horse) moves only by angle, or why pawn can't attack forward and move backward... There are more limitations than in soccer!
I learned myself to play chess rather good but I never really loved it.
And yes, to master in chess one needs tons of practice. So if you don't like chess - I don't advice you spending plenty of time in attempts to master it. Really, it's overrated that chess players are all great strategists and high-class intellectuals, they are often not.
Like Harry Kasparov, Russian chess grandmaster who went into politics and was completely unable to act with any strategy there. So playing chess is not the thing that can define one's intelligence or possible success in life.

I periodically get to play chess with my father. He uses "knight forks" very effectively, to the point where I sometimes prioritize his knights as targets by sacrificing my own bishops early in the game.

I used to play chess on yahoo games but got fed up because I suck at it. It gets kind of boring when you're always losing all the time and taking ages to make a move.

I sucked at chess too. In fact, I lost all the time to the point when I just gave up playing chess.