I don't quite know what you mean by "chess nowadays". It's always been the case that the players who make the best moves win more. And it's always been the cas

I don't quite know what you mean by "chess nowadays". It's always been the case that the players who make the best moves win more. And it's always been the case that memorization is a part of making good moves. Nothing qualitatively changed nowadays, it's always been true. What has changed quantitatively is that the quality of the average player is going up over the centuries, and memorization is part of that. So basically, what you said is equivalent to "with the amount of effort I'm willing to put in, I'm in a low percentile nowadays". Well, yes. And that's a good thing.