What are some cool sites to play chess.?

You might want to check out redhotpawn.com.

Several thousand players at all levels... you can play 'rated' games or just play someone for fun.

It also has some great discussion forums on every conceivable topic (including chess of course). But they also have great discussions/debates on politics, sports, world events, and history.

With a paid subscription, you can have an unlimited number of games going at once. If you just want to play without subscribing, you're limited to (I think) either five or six games at a time.

Also, you can set your time controls for the games and give yourself up to a week to make your moves...or you can set it to make several moves per day. And, you can probably find people who will play you in real time, just making one move after another in one session.

You can also fix your settings so that you are notified by email when your opponent has moved. This way, you don't have to check back constantly to see if it's your move yet.

letsplaychess.com is another good site, same kind of parameters, you can choose to subscribe to access extra features, etc. Or you can just register and play.

And don't worry about winning or losing at this point... believe me, you can learn a lot more from games that you lose than you can from games that you win!

Good luck to you!

gameknot.com is pretty cool. They keep track of the game and email you when your opponent moves. You can then log on to the website and see what he did, then make your move. itsyourturn.com has all kinds of games, including chess.

I suggest you play free internet chess at http://www.freechess.net/ and if you download a free Windows interface at http://www.babaschess.net/ they'll combine to give you a good online chess experience.

www.plasticbishop.com this is a correspondence sight but it's

one of the cleanest on the internet I know of.

www.kurnik.org

Ok this sight is good no ads no spam no software to install.

for amateurs, yahoo chess works great, it also has a tournament ladder if you are looking for more competitive play

yahoo games

itsyourturn.com,letsplaychess.com, and chess.ac