It’s funny because that’s partly what this a LOT about. FIDE, the defacto governing body of chess, wants freestyle chess (aka 960 aka Fischer random, which does lot to fix the memory issue you’re talking about) to not be allowed to have a “world championship”.

And that attitude led us to these honestly inane events.

I agree with you in a way.

Chess to me is boring because the better player should win/draw unless they blunder. And we (generally) know who the better player is because of ratings.

I’ve always much preferred games that in the short run have a luck component that can create massive swings (poker, backgammon, Scrabble) and inequality.

Something like that. I was interested in chess until i realized you have to memorize all those openings to play with the 'serious' people.

I'd play some Go but I have almost no one to play with casually. And since I play for fun, online isn't so good.

Memorizing openings is a waste of time unless/until you have a shot at good enough to make a living playing chess - about 1000 people and most of them live in poor countries where cost of living means they don't need to earn much to live.

learn your tactics and end games instead.

learning end games isn't also memorization?

Not really. there is some but a lot of it is how this pattern looks in different places on the board. You never see a text book endgame so you have to see how to win no matter where the pieces hapyen to be.