For some reason I get email notifications very sparatically. Sometimes never, sometimes right away. I've played 5 or 6 games and it's always been this way. I have a gmail account for email. Is this the reason? Do you guys not work well with gmail? Thanks

No, the email notifications should work perfectly fine with gmail. I would recommend that you make sure that you have your desired alerts set properly at http://www.chess.com/home/alerts.html

Also, you should make sure that you allow "@chess.com" as an approved sender to your email service so that emails from Chess.com are not filtered into the spam folder.

And also please note that while you are logged into the Chess.com website you should be receiving notification boxes on the actual website rather than email notifications so that it cuts down the emails that Chess.com must send out.

Yeah everything is checked correctly. And I just tried signing out before I close the site, and I still get half my alerts. Unfortunately it has never worked correctly for me. Not really sure what to do. I guess I could just make another email address and then have that forward to my gmail.

that is odd. email is so crazy. we are definitely sending the email, so gmail is doing something with it. :(