Is Chess anything more than memorization?

Sort of.

When GM Fine visited the Soviet Union in the 1930s he said he was impressed by the high level of the average player. There's a story of IM Wade giving a simultaneous exhibition against U14 kids and being massacred by them (I think it was +0-20=10). It wasn't that those street players and kids were smarter than anyone else on the planet. Chess wise, they were just used and willing to work to get results.

You need to memorize logic, that's it basically.  Everything else is using that logic in your games. It's like a math problem, using a formula to do something.

It might be of interest to look at the table of contents of A COMPLETE CHESS COURSE by Antonio Gude: "... 1 The Basic Rules of Chess 7 ... 2 Your First Chess Games 23 … 3 Openings and Basic Principles 33 ... 4 Putting Your Pieces to Work 52 ... 5 Strategy and Tactics 76 ... 6 Endgame Play and Further Openings 106 … 7 Combinations and Tactical Themes 128 ... 8 Attacking Play 163 ... 9 Your First Opening Repertoire 194 …"

http://www.gambitbooks.com/pdfs/A_Complete_Chess_Course.pdf

Maybe I too am naturally talented. Maybe in trash talking...mensa like level of course. Or my talent could be watching reruns of the Kardshians all day. This is a mystery.

That's why I like 960. Is less about tactics and more about smart management of resources

That's a good answer.  Maybe it isn't for everyone.  But alas, I dipped my feet back in and won 3 games today without a loss.  I got rid of the tunnel vision and just kinda tried to look at the board and see what he/she was trying to do and where I might surprise them from.  Maybe this will work, and maybe I was completely wrong about the memorization comment.

I tell ya, if chess is the first thing in my life I work hard at and struggle through, and I get good, that might be a cool feeling.  Not as depressed as yesterday lol.

Dude, I can't remember where I put my keys and you want me to memorise every chess opening?

"... the reader, after wading through these endless variations, has probably really understood but a very small number of the moves given. He sets out to memorise the variations. And what will be the result? There can be only one. In a couple of weeks most of these variations will have been entirely forgotten; the moves which he does succeed in remembering will have probably got into their wrong order, or otherwise be confused in his mind. As he never really understood them, he remembers only that such-and-such moves are made in a given opening, and the odds are on his making them at the wrong moment, or in the wrong variation. ..."

http://store.doverpublications.com/0486209202.html

I understand everyone is entitled to his opinions, but spreading unsubstantiated opinions is a different thing. Like... patterns? Where did Morphy, Lasker, Capablanca, or Alekhine found those patterns to memorize? Was there a Chess Informant back in the XIX Century? And I won't even touch that claim of "even the strongest players can only look at 1-2 positions in a second".

fortnite sucks

I don’t know that it makes sense to characterize this sort of thing as memorization, but I do have some sympathy for the idea of learning patterns. By the time of Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine, it was possible to learn from a substantial body of literature recording previous match and tournament activity. Even Morphy was able to learn from such things as the works of Philidor, Bilguer, Staunton, etc. Of course, one would imagine that Morphy, Lasker, etc. themselves originated many patterns that have become available to subsequent generations, but perhaps all of this is of limited relevance to the focus of the concern of GoGophers. Perhaps, pattern usage, in some sense, is a major aspect of the reason that GoGophers loses games to his usual opponents. Even so, learning to use such patterns is an activity that is very different from learning to use phone numbers.

In view of the third sentence, I am not comfortable with the second sentence about “memorized information”.

If you can't memorize chess patterns and openings, don't expect to get good ratings.

1.a3!!

People who believe chess is just memorization--just do not munderstand chess.

Regarding patterns a grand master may have thousands of patterns stored in her utok.

It seems to me that, in a discussion of this sort, disagreements are, to a large extent, simply a reflection of different conceptions of the meaning of a word. I would not want to claim authority to tell anyone else how to use the word, memorization, but I do note that, as far as I can tell, nobody else has that authority either. I would also question the utility of using the same word in connection with activities as varied as learning to use a phone number and learning to use a chess pattern. Indeed, if someone refers to memorization as a chess improvement strategy, I would say that there is reason to fear that a very non-optimal course of action is under consideration.

It's memorization in a sense, but not of lines of play like "I do this, you do that, I do this, and then if you do this I do that," etc.  It's more like memorization of what patterns look like.  Forks and skewers and removals and discovered attacks, etc., so that you see them in all situations.

And honestly, it's paying attention.  There's a master on youtube who plays class players and says what he's thinking as he goes--only maybe once every two games he says something that surprises me and I have to pause.  All the rest is stuff that I know about.  But I miss it.

Who is the master, if you don't mind mentioning it?

SeniorPatzer.  His name is John Bartholomew.  He has a lot of good stuff.  It's quite interesting (to me anyway) how often it comes down to missing something that you already know about.  It's like you are getting a lesson and the master says "now remember, don't put your queen on the same diagonal as the king when a bishop can attack both at once!"  And I say "yeah, I know.  I know that already."  But, have to ask, then why do I do it?