I played hockey and was by no means good, but had a friend who was a good goalie, and said it was always tough with the less good players because you couldn't cheat them at all, because even they had no idea where the puck was going.

For a long while, I didn't find games fun when I knew they had been "solved."

Chess is not a solved game.

Part of the reason why I can't get into Rubik's cubes, and it also lingers in the back of my mind with puzzles like sudoku or minesweeper.

The Bongcloud Attack (or Bongcloud Opening) is an irregular chess opening that consists of the moves:

1. e4 e5

2. Ke2?

It is considered a joke opening and is associated with internet chess humor.

And I laughed and laughed. Ke2? How delightfully absurd!

Bongcloud works because of how stupid it is. Your opponent doesn't know how to respond.

Idk, a lot of pros talk about how boring chess gets at a certain level. Lots of lines are solved so deep that going to tournaments can mean learning who your opponents are, studying as many of the openings that you know they play as deeply as possible and hoping that you guessed the right openings and that they prepared the wrong ones against you.

Things like the bongcloud work once, when no one at a tournament has seen it before, then it gets solved and playing it is only ever a disadvantage again. It can work in things like rapid chess or whatever when it's used to throw people off guard.

But they don't let me near the ten-year-olds any more

Some time ago I reached a point in Chess where I could go toe-to-toe with National Masters. It was around that time when I realized the game, while still tactically based, became more about assorted memorization of patterns. I still enjoy playing, yet my love was for the puzzle and finding a way my opponent hadn't yet seen. That knowledge, and my natural desire to continue improving, actually eroded my desire to continue, and I fell off since.

Just the way it is, and it isn't even really about winning; it's about my own reason to improve. That end goal just seems so...predefined.

My problem is that there is very limited amount of such people :/ People either don't or can't play chess or are really into it.

And of course there is always this one guy/gal who's like "Let's play, you'll probably beat me because I'm really rookie el oh el. Yeah I'm in local chess club but there are much better players than me. It's true that this one time I finished second in that chess championship but ..."

LET ME DREAM

Ah, the "Fools mate". Rookie mistake! (/s i suck at chess)

Yeah I could never understand that gambit. People keep playing this move but I'm just like "How do I be the sock?"

This is why I think Go is actually significantly more approachable than chess. With chess, you really need someone of very similar level; if one of you is a little better, that person will almost always win, and that's often kinda boring for both of you. But Go has a handicapping system built in that makes it way more forgiving of differences in skill, so that you can both play a pretty challenging game. I think it's contributed a lot to the culture around the game being more open and focused on teaching others, too.

That said, there are still a lot of things that high-level players memorize. But it seems like there are a lot more folks just playing for the joy of the game, and at the low levels, those folks will often outplay those who get very into the memorization too early.

"Hey guys, I have an idea! Let's play Smash Bros with items on! I got my Wiimote!"

You start with a piece handicap. It's interesting for both because it makes it competitive, but also completely destroys the better player's knowledge base because they're missing important pieces, making it more about intuition.

I play this way with a friend that I'm like a thousand points higher rated than. With a rook+knight handicap, it's very competitive, we probably each win about half the time.

we have ELO-based match-up systems

I don't know, they look a little mismatched what with all the different instruments.

A while ago I was grinding through the ranks of bots on an app and would only go to the next level when I could smash the current bot opening with bongcloud.