This is what Einstein said. He rarely played chess and certainly was not an "avid player" as Dodger111  claims. He said chess was to stressful. In his off time from work he liked to "relax" and found chess to taxing on his mind. He never said "chess is a waste of time". He simply did not find enjoyment in playing. Also, Einstein was never a Professor of Mathematics but a Professor of Theoretical Physics. So many people in these forums just "make stuff up off the top of their head".

chess game: Albert Einstein vs Robert Oppenheimer

It's well known that Albert Einstein was a friend of former world chess champion (and mathematician) Emanuel Lasker. It's also known that Einstein could play chess, though he reportedly disliked the competitive aspect. That said, he was a great player, even though he never really pursued the game.

There are a few recorded games of Einstein's. However he rarely played.

"... I must even confess that the struggle for power and the competitive spirit expressed in the form of an ingenious game have always been repugant to me. ..." - Einstein (1952)

i agree it is a nice way to waste time

Except for a "harry potter" scenario in which you may have to play a game of chess that your life would depend on , this game is wasting your time and energy just like any other hobby. If it becomes a profession meanwhile , then one can make an objection to this statement by any means as most professions are a waste of time from a Human Race view point ... ok Einstein , was dwelling into Universal shait, but the best way to describe Chess is "a beautiful way to waste your intelligence" ... wonder who said this?!

Einsteins issue with modern physics was essentially "what really disturbed him about the quantum theory was the problem of the total renunciation of all minimal standards of realism, even at the microscopic level, that the acceptance of the completeness of the theory implied" - quoting wikipedia. i.e. if everything to the smallest detail can be explained by quantum's add an unknown variable approach it may stop progress and measured incorrectly "complete".

To#56 I found some quotes not exactly what you said but most of these seem relevant

• Chess is mental torture. – Garry Kasparov
• Chess is so deep, I simply feel lost. – Vladimir Kramnik
• [Chess is] as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency. – Raymond Chandler in The Long Goodbye
• Chess is a fathead and feudal game – Georges Perec (in a book promoting Go)
• Chess is a fairy tale of 1001 blunders – Savielly Tartakower
• Chess is beautiful enough to waste your life for. – Hans Ree
• Chess is a beautiful mistress. – Bent Larsen
• Chess is life – Bobby Fischer
• Chess is like life – Boris Spassky
• Chess is everything – art, science, and sport. – Anatoly Karpov
• Chess is not relaxing; it's stressful even if you win. – Jennifer Shahade

c/- wikiquote

einstein was a scientist, don't consider him as a great philosopher and humanist.

einstein was wrong

Heck, my wife thinks chess is a waste of time!  And a lot of people think just like she does.  

A lot of hobbies are "a waste of time." Golfing, bowling, video games, etc....

Define a waste of time.

 being incapable of living in the present without engaging any activity or thinking about the future nor the past (agitation/depression) ... the most common human trait. So they try to "waste" that which does not exist in the first place. Your question raises some philosophical debate. 

Einstein was right about space-time, right about international affairs and right about chess. If Einstein had been a very keen chess player, he would have probably been insignificant. might possibly have been a good chess player but even if he was extraordinarily good he would have been nothing compared to the man who came up with the two theories of relativity (not to mention contributing a key part of the foundation of quantum mechanics in his PhD!).

It can be argued that he was wrong about quantum mechanics in the end, but he was wrong only in what he thought was likely and expressed this in a very scientific way. He believed that a particular consequence of QM was absurd and along with Podolsky and Rosen found a test for this. Bell turned this into a hypothetical experiment and Aspect was the first to implement this experiment, showing that the "absurd" consequence was a real one.

Unfortunately, this was after Einstein's death, so he never saw the EPR "paradox" turned out to be the mysterious but very real "spooky action at a distance".

man, i just love the works of Paul Dirac, Feynman, Newton and Einstein, especially with my back against a lemon tree.

Lose 5 games of chess in a row and chess becomes a waste of time. Win 5 in a row and chess is a good hobby. Probably Einstein is like a lot of clever people saying to himself, ' I'm great at physics, why am I mediocre at chess? If he was great at chess he probably wouldn't be calling it a waste of time, but a source of enjoyment. 

No, he saw it as a potential drain on intellectual resources and time. He recognised how it was possible to become very enthusiastic about chess, either from his own feelings or by observing others.

On reflection, it is possible that he was influenced by the fact that the mathematician Emmanuel Lasker was world champion for the most active part of Einstein's scientific life (including his PhD, and both of his famous theories).

pastime and waste-time rhyme. Maybe the guy who made the claim was hard of hearing?

I had started listening to this Alan Watts lecture about Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. https://youtu.be/BB0_I5RTQn4

The screen shows a Lao Tzu quote: 

"If you are depressed, you are livinng in the past.

If you are anxious, you are living in the future.

If you are at peace, you are living in the present."

Watts was a big advocate of the Caro-Kann