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Chess was far more fun 20+ years ago. Before everyone had a supercomputer-powered chess engine in their hands...

While studying openings was a thing, it still felt like there was room for improvisation and tactics. Now playing feels like a chore and more about rote memorization than actually playing a game.

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I wonder if it'd be better or worse to scale timelimits? Say once ratings are over 1500, the lowest ranked players rating is used to calculate the time-limits of the game. A player at or below 1500 still has the same times (to let us amateurs consider a bit) but scale so that once players approach 3000 in ranking the speed basically becomes rapid or blitz.

If even pros make mistakes at that level, it should get rid of much draws and overly long games. And perhaps even appeal to a wider audience in our sped up society.

Isn't speed chess already a thing? Is this a different idea?

Time isn't that much of a handicap. High-level players just have much better pattern recognition and intuition. It's the same reason they adapt faster to weird positions in Fischer Random than lower-rated classical players.

Even with gaps of 200 points the thinking and play speed difference is acute at high levels, for example in Magnus' playful "too weak, too slow" casual blitz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY27lgnPKWI

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