Hi everyone,
I have been in a dilemma recently. During my college days I was actively engaged with discrete maths and used to practice it admittedly a bit irregularly. Then I was introduced to CP last year. I started with leetcode and soon I started getting a hang of everything then moved to codeforces. At the same time last year, chess was rising in popularity and I got introduced to Levy's channel aka GothamChess. I had never given much thought to chess before so watching his game analysis were an eye opener as to how fascinating the world of chess is. My interest has only grown since then.
I am at a point where I want to specialize and become really good at one of them but I am facing difficulty choosing one of them. I have confidence in CP and math as I know how things are done there, I understand proofs and I know what questions to ask when solving a problem. This element of confidence is at the moment missing in chess. I have not yet become comfortable in the field. I have heard that chess is also a lot of memorization when you get good and there is almost no place for creativity which bothers me. Also since I am planning to specialize I want to know does chess become boring after a few years since the starting position is always the same? This is never the case with CP as it always gives variety and I have seen some Project Euler problems which are baffling too. Personally I love chess because of its rich tactics and the feeling of a genius fight and insane brilliant moves. My rating on chess.com is 1300. Can you guys give some insight and tips that could help me make a decision? I would also like to mention that I am 25 years old and I work as a software engineer in a company.Age is not a problem for me tho. I am okay with starting late.