That's incorrect. I did a lot of ending puzzles and knew a lot about openings and variations at age 5, learned mostly because a father of a friend was very enthusiastic about it.

I quit playing around age 7 because some kids there were really out of my league and there wasn't enough government or support for me to continue playing given that I wasn't the best. I still play to this day, but mostly amateurish and very sporadically.

Of course if you just want to do it for fun, it's fine. But if you can to become a GM and make a living playing chess, the bar is pretty high and it's very likely that you suck.

You can start to play a bit later and become a GM, but it's a big gamble with your future.

Most people I know who continued with chess nowadays are in the low 2K range, one made it to IM... all share extremely good memory and logical thinking and could just have been instead a lazy CS student and get top grades, eventually become a software engineer and enjoy a good life. But instead have a shitty life playing the same game all over again and have a hard time leaving it now to do something else, as it's the thing they dedicated their whole life to.