I have Chessmaster10, and it is fun and all, but I am starting to see a small pattern of how they get better. ChessMaster has a program to teach you opening principles and after I went through it I started noticing how the players got better as I move up. While I must get better to match how they get better, I do not believe I am seeing true variation here.


I think the solution to my problem is to play online, against people who potentially went through an entirely different type of learning, and would play completely different from what ChessMaster would.


Can anyone recommend a good site for me to play on? One that will record my stats/rating/wins vs losses and what not. If you know of free ones that would be great, but if there is some official millions of people play it super cool site that cost money, I might consider that. By the way my rating is 950 and my standard rating is 1080, been playing since beginning of march(3 months)

The best sites to play are ICC (pay site) and FICS (freechess.org - totally free). ICC is bigger, with more "extras", like lots of grandmasters who show up, so you can watch their games, and analysis of top level games. But if you're just looking to play against others at your own level, FICS is just as good.

--Fromper

Online live play for free:
FICS
Chesscube.com

Online correspondence for free:
Itsyourturn.com
Here!

Pay to play:
ICC
World Chess Live

Chesscube.com has a nice interface, but hard to find games longer than 5 minutes. FICS is nice, but the command-line interface takes getting used to.
ICC is definitely worth the money, as long as you use it somewhat regularly.