That's true, but only of intensely competitive play. You can reliably beat beginners, amateurs, and even many devoted hobbyists by reading about three books worth of visual patterns and then honing your epistemic/instrumental rationality to a fever pitch.

There is a skill level beyond which you cannot win without sinking thousands of hours into memorizing trees of opening moves, but you can comfortably enjoy chess while learning new skills for thousands of hours before you ever reach that point, and even once you reach that point you can always play the occasional friendly game with someone who shares your distaste for otherwise pointless memorization.

That said, there are very few reasons to play any game repeatedly if you're not having a lot of fun with it. If you're going to bother to force yourself to do something, force yourself to learn a skill or read a textbook or earn money or help people, not to play a game. The whole comparative advantage of games is that they can teach us things without more than a trivial cost in terms of morale & willpower.