Back in the day, I was undefeated at Clevermedia’s multiplayer chess. I haven’t went to that site in ages, so I don’t know if it even exsists any more. Anyway, I found this other site, www.itsyourturn.com that I’ve been playing in tournaments in lately. The site’s kind of like playing by mail, and I can’t win to save my life. I don’t know if it’s because this site isn’t real-time or what, but my chess powers are gone.
[sub]Both mundane and pointless, I hope you don’t mind me sharing.[/sub]
Get yourself a really good chess computer program, and use that to assist you in defeating other humans.
you were undefeated at some point and now you’re whining you can’t win? Hell I can barely win against utter novices. 
That’s because you aren’t playing me.
I can’t either, but I usually do better on a real, 3d board than on an online game like IYT. And the real-time element helps too, sometimes, because you can plan ahead without forgetting what you had planned. But yeah, it’s a hard game.
I can’t play long term chess either, although I rarely find people who can beat me face to face.
Once I lose sight of what I was trying to do, it takes me so longer to figure it out again that I’ve already lost.
I can’t win at chess either. I’ve concluded that this is because I suck at playing chess. YMMV.
Play two games at a time, one as white and one as black. In each game play your opponent’s move from the other game. You will start to win 50% of the time.
I suck at chess as well, but I’ve started to realize better strategy. Best thing to remember: go for the throat. I used to spend WAY too much brainpower on defense, and not enough of offense. Get those knights and bishops out on the field and DESTROY! Of course focus on defense, but be aggressive.
And rent SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISHER. The best damn chess movie ever. (only chess movie ever?)
So I’m a chess fan and I quickly found a love for the game, here I am 20 and still playing it on and off. Last summer while home a chess shop opened up and so I went to check it out, they have tournaments nightly (little round robin games) and as I quickly found out. I’m not really that good a chess player.
I got trounced by pre-teen kids. Here I am 20 and they’re 12, not only are they beating me they’re trash talking about it. I swear if one of their dad’s hadn’t owned the store I would have offered to take the dispute outside.
As for how to learn to be better, may I suggest ICC? Internet Chess Club is an online service costs like $30 a year or something like that. Well worth the money in my mind, you can play in online tournaments and even get lessons from GMs, IMs, and FMs. That sort of thing. If you sign up… tell them Foxfire sent you 
Tsk, tsk dopers. Here I join this SDMB thing not 2 months ago, expecting to find a slew of intellectual-types to make me feel like less of a dork. What a disppointment.
For the record, I am also a failure at chess.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time at www. testyourchess.com lately. The site sort of walks you through actual tournament games that other people have played, and at each step you are invited to try to figure out what move the GOOD player would make next. Your choice is then graded and commented on.
All good suggestions. In these tournements, you’re split into sections, four players to a section. You then play two games simentaneously (sp?) against the other three players. And yeah, I have yet to win one match. I might have to check out this testyourchess, though, it sounds like it could help.
If you are especially interested in improving your game may I suggest the book Logical Chess by Irving Chernev as a starting point.
Yea that’s probably one of my favorite books as well. Of course, I suck at chess so that ain’t saying much.