Is chess less popular than it used to be?

As far as chess popularity in the USA is concerned, if you want any facts instead of opinions and hearsay, you could check out the membership stats for USCF for the last 20-30 years and probably get a lot of other FACTUAL information regarding the popularity (or lack thereof) of chess in this country (ie, # of USCF tnmts held each year, # of chess websites, newspaper columns etc)

As for Croatia or any other nation I think the place to go would be that nation's own chess federation for the same info as outlined above.

I recently started playing. Im not a member of USCF or any other group. My reason is I feel the group is all about money. Yearly membership wasnt that much but, the entry fees for tourneys was outragious. I think the money aspect is behind the increse in online play and decrese of any national or club orginization. 

How much is it to enter a tournament in USA, for interest sake?

Geez, that's expensive.

For the top tourneys in SA it's about R250.00 (divide by 7 to get $)

But, I guess the quality of the fields are not too great, you'd get 5 or 6 titled players if you're lucky, and never better than IM.

Chess would be more popular if each chess enthusiast tried to get students he could teach for roughly 20 - 30 per hour. Start your own business, get organized. Then those students you teach can go teach others and so on and so on. Thats what i do and I usually have any where from 4 or 5 to 12 or 13 students at any given time. We hold monthly tournaments just for fun and the trophies.

China didn't start attending the Olympiads until 1978.  There were 66 countries participating in Buenos Aires Olympiad in 1978.  At Dresden 2008, there were 147.

Who says chess is less popular now than ever?

How many games per day are played online at all the various websites? chess.com, playchess.com, FICS, ICC, Yahoo... has this many chess games per day ever been played before?

Yes club attendance is declining. Why? Inconvenience, I can log on anytime anywhere and find a game against a wide variety of opponents. WHy bother going to a club at a set weekly time, pay a yearly memebrship fee for  a few live OTB games per year? Online is so much more conveneient.

Tournaments? WHo has time to take a whole weekend to play a tourney with standard time controls other than a few dedicated individuals? Travelling to another city for a tournament with the expense and time required? Fuggedaboutit

Chess skills also decline with lack of play. It is not an activity you can just pickup and drop. If I don't have time to play for a few weeks at a time When I start again I have to relearn a whole lot just to get back to where I was. It takes a long time to get good. Not a lot of people want to study openings in their spare time. I've got other things to do Even online gaming I play poker and backgammon as well as chess, chess is the least accessible.

Why is poker more accessible? Its easier to learn, you can earn more $$, in a standard tournament an amateur has more chance at success than entering a chess tournament with a lot less preparation time. Poker is the fast food of online games.

Chess in the U.S. is on the decline. We need a "Bobby Fischer" charasmatic figure to reignite interest. Those of us old enough to remember the chess craze Fischer's match with Spasky ignited know that as the hey day for U.S. interest. I can remember the moves of the games being on the front page and people with limited chess knowledge re-creating the moves in coffee shops.

These days the people who are not watching sports are watching professional gamers compete instead of chess

but on non professional level, lots of people have started playing chess online wheter on pc or video game consoles

I think chess is less popular now then it was when my dad was my age because during the cold war Chess was one of the peaceful ways the USA and USSR would try to prove that they were smarter then the other. Now that the cold war is over the United States are not interested in promoting chess because they have already won the game.

OTB has died were I live. We used to have a couple of small but good chess clubs but now you can not find any. Everyone is playing online now.

OP hasn't logged in for over a year, I wonder what happened.

A lot of people including yourself have been quoted as saying that the most dangerous Chess player is The John Bear.  

Yes. In 1998 there were several shelves of chess books at Borders. They were good books too. Like the book about Tal on how intuitive his play was and his career. There were lots of useful books like How to Sharpen Your Tactics. I didn't buy many of them because I thought I could buy them later. Now there's nothing. Silman's endgame book at Barnes and Noble is the best one and I’m surprised that's there. Someone must have ordered it and changed their mind. Everything else is introductory. I know one place with about twenty shelves of old books that never sold over the past forty years. They don't have the good books because the books that didn't sell have taken over the shelves. I have this theory about retail that all the good stuff has been sold. Only the stuff nobody wants is left on the shelf. It's a wasteland in the book stores. Kindle is not keeping up and their formatting is bad. Everyman Chess publishing might be better. You can order used books but they come damaged. It's weird because I don't think they're that many people using Chessbase and Chessable. Maybe people are just heavily using streamers on Youtube to learn about chess. That's easier and it's less of a commitment than owning a chess book. I can't tell if chess is more popular or not. I've met three people in my neighborhood that say they play on Chess.com. I'm not sure how much they play though. One guy beat me so I think he's playing. I miss the days when you could go to a cafe and play. If ever you meet someone that says they play on Chess.com, be sure to get their username because this is where the action is at.

I blame it on the internet as well. Many of my favorite bookstores have closed. 

I am not in disagreement with you with the internet more % of people are probably playing chess now but the nature ( for lack of a better term ) of the game has changed. 

I remember growing up all my friends had a chess board. Put up on the shelf next to the monopoly game. Even as an adult I could always find someone to pull out a chess board and play a couple of lousy games with.

IN this year that is about to end I can think of only 3 serious games I have played with a real live person sitting across from me. I don't know, much has been gained with the internet and being able to find a game anytime from somebody clear across the world but I think something has been lost as well.

All this chess equipment and nobody to play with. I had five OTB games thIs year. Looking forward to playing more of them next year. I have met three players in the neighborhood and I have a chess club to go to. There's a tea house on the corner. I would love to get something started over there. They have other events. I keep going on my own with my tournament bag and cell phone but have only had one pickup game. I played on someone else's board which was encouraging to me. Should have gotten a phone number but I didn't want to be weird. It's up to us to organize something in our own neighborhoods. I miss playing chess on the street and at cafes. It's so tactile moving those pieces then hitting the clock as fast as you can. The adrenaline. The coffee. The late nights. So glad I had the experience.