Alright, Veeky Forums, start us off

I actually tried getting into chess recently. I hovered around 800 on chess.com, but kept running into blatant cheaters who were taking 40 seconds per move then making ridiculous perfect plays and it stopped being fun. Putting up with shit games like Magic and the trash that calls itself video games these days has made me appreciate symmetrical game balance a lot more though.

Well played.

Honestly, unless you have real talent for it, chess is only fun when played with friends. Whenever it gets competitive enough, memorization becomes king and that's just boring for me.

Talent is a myth. Everything is practice so long as you're an intelligent human being.

Completely wrong. A talented person will get more benefit from suitable practice.

My partner has dyspraxia, and is absolutely horrible with maths. They have always been this way, since the very first days of school. Since natural negative penalties exist, the idea that natural positive bonuses don't also exist is nonsensical.

You probably believe otherwise because you have an over-enthusiastic idea of your own capabilities. You might feel like you could do anything if you tried hard enough for long enough, but certain things will remain outside your reach simply due to the human lifespan not being long enough to make up for all innate difficulties.

My friend rarely plays chess, I do it around once a week. He defeated me every single time we played. It's anecdotal, but some people like me actually suck at chess.

I've extrapolated 30 turns into the future and I see that I have no chance of success, forfeit.

I sacrifice a pawn and summon 1d4 direrats

I play sherazade, forcing a sub game

I send a priest to convert the white king to black.

I've learned to play chess recently and decided to play with my friends once. Got beaten by everybody, and most humiliating thing is i got beaten by the most drunk one too. They hadn't even played it since childhood. Went home feeling like shit afterwards. Ego - destroyed.

That's why I enjoy this variant more

>implying that innate mental deficiencies and outlier cases make for a general rule-of-thumb

Talent, as it is widely understood, is experience and practice applied.

Your counterargument hinges on talent only being understood as the beneficial application of a genetic aberration, which by definition is an abnormal occurrence. Absolute pitch might benefit a potential musician, but not every talented musician has the benefit of absolute pitch. You might as well say: "You'll never be able to match Peter Dinklage's talent for limbo!" while ignoring the aberration which is his natural height.

This looks stupid af.

After digging the trenches, the Rooks will commence artillery barrages of predicted enemy trenches. During this barrage, one quarter of the Pawn force, reinforced by the Knights, will rush forward and dig a forward trench. The enemy will be tempted into assaulting this artificial salient, at which point the Bishop units, which have moved forward under the cover of night, will open up with emplaced machine guns and cut the opposing assault to ribbons. If the opposing king has not surrendered by that point, we will move up and repeat the process, with their HQ as our primary target.

I predict that this war will be over by Christmas.

Rolled 14, 18, 19 = 51 (3d20)

I roll to seduce.

M E M E S

>Whenever it gets competitive enough, memorization becomes king

That is what beginners think, and it´s a big mistake.
The only point in which memory has something to do is the opening, and there is no way you can cover a useful portion of branches just with that.
You need to understand the spirit, common ideas, main plans and pawns structure of the opening. The beginner will try to memorize, and the moment he reach the end of the memorized line he won´t know what the hell is he watching on the board.

>English opening
>explosive
Nice pun, but nope

There is no way the king´s black bishop reaches g2, so I doubt anybody cares at all.

Nonsense. This will make two of the players team against the other one (unless the three of them are stupid), and once is defeated it´s just a 1vs1 game in a weird board.

It seems you mixed up talent and being good at something. A talented musician will play well, but playing well can be achieved through hard work. It's just that a talented in some way (say, having absolute pitch) person will achieve it easier, and reach greater heights of achievement through same effort.

While I understand your point, when the chess clocks come out, having memorized common openings means you don't fuck up badly and get more time to think than your opponent. That's a huge advantage over an amateur player.