In high school my friends played a lot of "gunboat", where you stay at the board and all negotiations happen in the open. Seasons can be as short as you want,

In high school my friends played a lot of "gunboat", where you stay at the board and all negotiations happen in the open. Seasons can be as short as you want, we usually aimed for around 10 minutes. Obviously lacks some of the planning/scheming of the full game I think its a much faster way to learn the mechanics of openings and builds and such.