I publish a diary now and again to try to recruit players for our online Kossack chess team. Everyone is welcome to join. We don't care how good you are. We have some top players and then we have players like me that aren't so good.
The matches we play are online correspondence chess with 3 days allowed per move. These are rated games. The default rating for new players is 1200. First you must register with chess.com. It's free. Then go to our group's home page at Kossacks. Clink on join group. One of the administrators will approve your membership. Then click on matches in the main menu in the upper right corner of the page. On our match page there will be a list of our matches past, present and future. Find an open match at the top of the page. The open matches are the ones that haven't started yet. Click on view and it will show the match and the lineup. Click on join match and you're in.
Our highest ranking player signed up for a match will be matched against their highest. Our second to their second ect. If the sides are uneven when the match starts the extras are bumped. You will play two games. One as white, one as black. You score 1 point for a win and .5 for a draw. When all games are over the team with the highest score wins the match.
You will be notified by email when the match starts. Once the match starts you will also be notified by email when it is your turn. You must make a move within 3 days or you will timeout and lose the game. If for some reason you cannot make a move in 3 days then you can go to your profile page and put yourself on vacation but you have a limited number of vacation days.
You can also play live games online in real time and do many other things at Chess.com. Our group was started summer 2009. We play matches and sometimes have a Kossack tournament among ourselves. We play just for fun so even if you aren't that good of a chess player, so what, neither am I. So if you like to play chess and would like to play on a team with other Kossacks against other teams come on over and see us.