[carc]

As a recreational player that plays in tournaments from time to time and is active in my local chess community, this post really only exposes that you don't know what you're talking about. For context, I'm not amazing but I'm no slouch (~95th percentile in the US) and memorization accounts for so little of my defeats or victories that it's practically meaningless. In fact, studying the openings is usually considered to be the least value-adding way to improve unless you're a titled player (usually 2400+ US ELO)

[Retra]

They are talking about perceptions of chess among non-chess players, not the reality of chess for high-level players.