I've been surfing around the site a little bit and I seem to run into a ton of options. Some of the options I don't fully understand yet. I'm wondering if their is any place better or worse to get started on this site for an amateur. I notice there are a ton of clubs on the site... How do you get invited?

Please forgive the new guy hand-holding cliche.

The first game you play (New Game on the menu) should be a "Welcome Game" with a regular player. These are regular users who have volunteered to play a game with newcomers.

So you can chat with them while you play.

There is a big FAQ under Help on the menu

To join a club, you can go to any club under "Clubs", go to the homepage of that club, and request membership.

USN Rckt Sci,
Definitely get to know the site and the mechanics of how playing chess works on here. Personally, I like the site because we can study and learn while we are playing chess. We have the time to learn openings instead of just on-the-spot playing of moves. Yahoo.com is nice for short time games say 1 minute to 30 minutes on each side which can include the adding of time per move.

On here you can play a 1 day per move game with a 0 day timebank or you can play a 21 day per move game with a 28 day timebank. I guess, one of my games took over a year to play. There are chances for personal learning on here as well with users like greenpawn34 who blogs or Ragwort who annotates a game. Furthermore you get to read books, look at databases, check out statistical data of moves, watch videos, and do whatever non-cheating else causes learning. We are "Not" supposed to use a computer to help us.

I do like this site. May you have success on here.

KingOnPoint

Thanks KingOnPoint you really summed up the features I was looking at and gave a more in depth look at whats possible here. I'll make sure I find the greenpawn and ragwort articles and games. A couple users have graciously started games with me so now I'm getting my start.