I always enjoyed chess when I was young. I, like many here, enjoyed a fairly intellectual circle in my youth, so most everyone was familiar with the game and it

I always enjoyed chess when I was young. I, like many here, enjoyed a fairly intellectual circle in my youth, so most everyone was familiar with the game and its rules, and so I got to play a lot. I wasn't terribly interested in the rote memorization of propitious move and traditional countermove; once my opponents began to make comments like "ah, the Tanzanian salchow" upon my innocently moving a rook forward or whatever, I turned to other pursuits. It's possible to return chess to that realm of pure thought over memorization -- chess variants! I suggest Duck Chess [0], whose inclusion of an invulnerable shared piece which each player moves on their turn (the "duck") renders most chess strategies incoherent. A less formal alternative coalesced in university -- get a bunch of (inebriated) people together to watch the (inebriated) chess match. Their role is to loudly count down from 5. It is in this time that you must make your move, or your opponent will make it for you. The combination of time-crunch and looseheadedness prevents the recall of how castling works, let alone more complex gambits. [0] https://duckchess.com/ https://duckchess.com/