[Vautrin]

Unless you are a natural talent, it takes hundreds of hours to get the basics (motives, mating techniques), thousands of hours to get good at it, and even more time to get better. You really need to start very young, otherwise you will never get good at the game.

You can spend a lot of time on a game. And study the dynamics of the position, and try to make sense out of a position that arose with relative simple means. Which is much harder than it seems at first.

For most people it is not worth it, because it simply costs so much time, for relatively little reward; but you can of course play short games as well, that only last a few minutes. They are great fun too.

There are a lot of websites for playing chess. But most have the problem of cheating (Ego-thingy, something which is extremely common amongst chess players), or are commercial in nature (or both).
You can play on a lot of sites for free though, so anyone who is interested ...