Can a 28-year-old man become good at chess?

I once saw someone say that learning chess becomes more difficult as you get older.

At 28, was it too late to start playing chess?

@1

"Can a 28-year-old man become good at chess?"
++ Define good...
1500 is easy: it is a matter of not hanging pieces and pawns i.e. blunder checking

2000 is achievable with 1 year of hard work

more is probably no longer possible at age 28

It's possible just play till you can and don't think about negative things like I can't play it

The important thing in my opinion is, can a 28 year old man enjoy chess? I think it is most important to enjoy it first and foremost.

Good luck in your chess journey.

I played what is probably the best game of my life at age 62.

It also marked the first time my rating passed the 2100s.

Link:

A Heroic Defense in the Sicilian Najdorf - Kids, don't try this at home! - Chess Forums - Chess.com

What is "good" to you? Why would you like to be good at chess and how would you feel if you only achieve 9/10 good instead of 10/10 good?

Otherwise, are you really asking as adult if there exist adults learners in activity X and if some of them became "good"? 

I am 70yrs old and I have just started getting back into chess, not because I want to be an IM or GM, but because I enjoy it.

That's the best reason there is.

2000 takes most much longer than a year of hard work on their chess (if they reach it at all!) and 1500 requires much more than not hanging pieces, unless you are referring to short combinations such as things 2-3 moves deep. People at 1500 aren't typically hanging pieces in one move.

28 isn't "too late" at all. You can take up the game of chess at any age and enjoy it. Former Chess World Champion, Mikhail Tal, reached his peak rating of over 2700 at age 44 (although to be fair he was a Grandmaster by age 21 already).

I think it might be tougher to improve at chess as an adult simply because of "life responsibilities" such as a career or family or errands; children typically don't have as many of these responsibilities and so they have more potential time to work on their chess.

I don't want to demoralize u but if u have any secret hopes in your heart of becoming a master starting at a late age then u must be prepared to work twice as hard as the brilliant genius kids here who even at an early stage are like baby sharks ready to rip apart and tear to shreds old crocodiles like us, we old timers can't match them but perhaps with a lot of time and effort and after a lot of bitter disappointments may be able to hunt and gobble a few baby sharks but their grown up parents will never be our prey

To be fair, there is also the matter of brain plasticity. The number of synapses per neuron (ie: the complexity of the inter-connections) decreases steadily after about three years old, and is roughly halved (from 15,000 connections per neuron down to roughly half that) by adulthood.

I thought about brain plasticity when I wrote my post, but chose not to include that because it primarily applies to people of age 3 to roughly 21. By age 25 or so, then human brain has fully completed it's mental development. From this point on, you can still learn and literally reshape your brain, but the process is more of adapting than developing. This post refers to if age 28 is "too late" and I say no it isn't. The post wasn't asking how likely to become a chess world champion, or even a grandmaster; you can certainly become a very strong chess player and also enjoy the game of chess at just about any age.

This is one of the amazing things about the game of chess; all walks of life play chess and pretty much anyone can potentially play chess.

Yes, at Age 28, you can get good at chess. Can you become a titled player or work towards that goal? Probably, but it's going to be an unrealistic amount of work that you'd need to put in and it probably won't be worth the time at this age. 

There are too many resources and our chess world has become way more digitized and modern that I'd say you would have needed to start learning at the age of 5 if you had a dream of becoming a titled player by the age of around 10-12. 

For now, enjoy what you can and work towards improving your rating with baby steps. 

Starting at 28 you won't become a grandmaster, but getting a 2000 rating or even FIDE master is possible.

The late John Powell of Jamaica was a heavyweight boxer who started playing chess seriously after his boxing career ended. He became the #2 chess player in Jamaica, played several times at the Chess Olympiad, and achieved the FIDE Master title (awarded posthumously).  When I was playing in tournaments as a teenager in Jamaica, he was one of the arbiters.