You can memorize the correct opening moves in chess. For maybe my first year playing chess, I just YOLO'd the opening moves. My judgement there was probably not much worse than the rest of my play, but with other players playing engine moves in the opening, I was probably in a losing position early on in most of my games. I gained about, I think, 100 ELO after learning some 3 or 4 move opening combinations.
I had the same experience, except it wasn't my first year playing. It was my entire childhood and for years afterwards whenever I'd casually play someone (I still only play casually, just less casually now).
Only recently did I decide to learn the good and bad moves for my favourite openings. It can be much more fun that it sounds. Instead of only memorising, you can play with a chess engine and see, and hopefully internalise, why a move is bad or another move is better, e.g. stopping that pawn moving forwards any more is more important than getting a knight out.
And you can start with just a few openings - your favourite opening for white, and for black, just your favourite defence to each of the common openings.
