You might remember the meaning of the character 棋 with this easy mnemonic:
My daughter loves to play chess, so I made her chess pieces with her favorite tree (木) that has a sweet (甘) aroma. She was so happy, she cried for one (一) minute and gave me eight (八) big hugs.
Using mnemonics to remember the meaning of Chinese characters like has a huge impact on how long to learn Mandarin it takes.