Chess is a brutal and violent martial art, and trying to force childish concepts such as "fun" into it, is simply foolish.
As always, it depends on how you see things. I don't see chess as a brutal and violent martial art : if I saw it that way, I wouldn't be interested in playing it.
I think it's the reason why chess players often don't understand each other : many see this game in a certain way, and think that everyone should see it that way, and only that way. And they sometime get angry when they are faced with an opponent who interprets it in a different way from theirs. Almost as if it were an offense to dare to consider Chess something different from how they conceive it.
Chess is definitely fun for those who see it above all as an interesting game that engages the mind, and later as a competition ( but never bloody ).
Known thing is: chess is a struggle against oneself. Everything is there right in front of your eyes. No dices, no cards, all is in plain sight, yet, something in you wants to overlook things, something in us wants to see the nice and not the ugly, something in us plans to live by denials and myths about what we can, what we are, etc.
And so, chess is the cruel mirror that never wants to tell us we are the prettiest unless we deserve it for good.
It's not a thing about "fun" but more a thing about satisfaction. Are you in overall more lucid, more in self control than previously? If yes, you feel better, if not, you feel worse.
And it's the bite of the worse, we want to avoid, that pushes us, more than the reward of the better.
Chess is a brutal and violent martial art, and trying to force childish concepts such as "fun" into it, is simply foolish.
And chess is also a good training for many matters of life, such as how to learn from past mistakes instead of repeating endlessly the same errors.