Not a chess player either, but I'd imagine it would be easier to know the begginings of a standard opening, then just play a wrong move. At that point it ia unlikely to transpose back into a standard opening.
I do this trick a fair amount in Go, and actually have accumulated some "standard" non-standard openings that I play when the oppurtunity arrises. Because I play them fairly often, I actually have more experience with them then my opponent, so end up with the "memorization" advantage.
Also, in my experience, players will notice the mistake and then try a bit too hard to take advantage, instead of being satisfied with getting the "normal" result.
I asked a few people much better than me and they couldn't think of any standard openings similar to what I was using. A few were able to point out some openings it was similar to, but those were rarely used openings.
I'm such a bad chess player I barely count as an amateur, but it's definitely possible to know simple jerkass bidding systems in bridge and just enough about some of the "standard" systems to screw with people and often win, without being capable of playing any of the standard systems.
Nb however that most tournaments and such ban loads of bidding strategies with all kinds of special rules, so you can't do this just anywhere.
