Chess is weird

I can beat Isabel as both white and black at 1600 but I can't beat Li at 2000 unless I mimic her moves so I think I'm somewhere in that range for however this scoring system works.

I have had a lifelong friend I could never beat. Last few years we played 4 matches and I was able to win 3 of the 4. That was strange to me as I hadn't even played in years before then.

Chess is weird. I can't help but be annoyed by it for how restricted it feels. That's what makes it feel kinda boring to me. If you want to win, which we all do because that's the point, only a certain few opening moves are honestly viable. At least, I couldn't win if I didn't use them against the chess.com AIs.

So, I was compelled to seek out opinions and came across a bunch of negative ones even by famous chess players.

I've heard it said that chess only becomes interesting once all book moves are exhausted and I agree. And there are too many book moves so it lasts a long time.

Paul Morphy's, “The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.”

That famous video interviewing Bobby Fischer and all his points about it.

Mathematics and predictability are why fighting game suck now too. It's all the same Bnbs and frame advantages. launcher, combo, extender1, combo, extender 2, hyper. And that's on top of bad gameplay which allows Tods and horrendous hitboxes and bad online. Hitbox problems and bad online shouldn't even be a thing. It's a fighting game, they have almost nothing else to do/get right. SF, Tekken, Marvel, anything by arksys, they all have long started to play the same over the past decade. A distinct decline in quality even if the budgets are bigger making them look prettier. But I digress.

I've only just discovered it but I think Shogi is where it's at. Similar to chess but with way more depth and creativity or variation. I'm a novice so I'm probably misinformed but the depth seems staggering because of the following component. The big difference between chess and shogi seem to be that once you capture a piece, you can play it almost anywhere. That's crazy to me and feels much more impossible to predict. Therefore it allows more freedom of expression and creative play. And the promotions are more fun since they are more frequent affecting every piece at earlier lines when promotion is pretty rare in chess since it can only be done with pawns on the back line and you're only ever going to pick the queen.

I don't have a specific point with this post I guess. I suppose I just wanted to express myself and the strange feeling I have towards chess. I remember liking it. I wanted to like it. I don't and it seems silly to me now. It didn't years before even though I'm better at it than I was.

I guess I'm right then. Moving on to Go and Shogi and chess can rot.

I don't know much about Shogi but I would be highly surprised if there isn't also extensive opening theory for that game too (it's probably only applicable at very high levels of the game, but the same is true of chess).

Fischer advocated for chess960, if you take issue with openings that's probably a better 'solution' than Shogi. If you like Shogi you could also try Crazyhouse, although personally it's not my favourite varient.

That's fair and thank you for the suggestions.

Chess, like any other activity or game, has its pros and cons, and personal preferences play a significant role in determining whether it resonates with an individual.

I mean if you just play against bots it's kinda boring, but I agree that openings can get repetitive