Chess on the web

Please note that this is only a very small selection of chess websites. Youtube in particular has a vast number of channels about chess.  This list, however, should be a reasonable first introduction to what is out there.

chess.com: the world's largest playing site

At the last count, chess.com had 153 million members.   Now you're not going to get 100 million+ members on at the same time, and of course a large number of these accounts will in any case be inactive.  Nonetheless there are typically about 150,000 players online at any one time, which means you will certainly get a game whenever you go in.

Apart from playing facilities, chess.com offers an extensive selection of tuitional material, including an easily followed course for absolute beginners:  go in and look for Learn --> Lessons --> How to move the pieces to get you started.  There are also thousands of puzzles and other learning resources (databases of games, openings etc)

Chess.com has 4 levels of membership with varying privileges, ranging from free basic membership (quite adequate for most people) through to the highest membership at 144 USD per year. The 60 USD Gold option seems to give a good range of extras for a fairly reasonable price.

chess.com...

lichess.org:  a free playing site with many other facilities

Lichess is absolutely free - and boasts that it always will be.   With 10-20 million members, it is the World's second largest playing platform, and regular members are adamant that it is the best one.

As with chess.com, you can play people of your own level at various time controls, from bullet (1 minute) chess right up to 14 days per move.

There are beginners pages with exercises, and other resources too.

Some aspects of lichess (the opening explorer, for example, and the facility for playing against computers) are not so good as in chess.com, but for most purposes lichess is excellent.

lichess...

Youtubers: Agadmator

Antonio Radic is a Croatian player who uploads daily videos of Grandmaster games.  He was the first to do this that I know about, and to my mind his easy going manner and natural humour still makes him better than the many other Youtubers who have followed his lead.

Agadmator's commentary is not too detailed, but be warned:  he does rattle on at pace, so you may want to reduce the video playback speed. Easily done by going into Settings near the bottom right hand corner of any Youtube video, and changing the playback speed (this does not distort his voice, by the way).

Agadmator...

Youtubers: Gotham chess

A louder approach can be found in the person of GothamChess.  Levy Rozman is an International Master from New York, who has been a full-time Youtuber since 2020.   A large collection of videos about various aspects of chess (plus a beginners series) all presented with Rozman's manic enthusiasm.

GothamChess...