Play a lot of games. Solve a lot of Tactics Problems. The "Chess Tactics Server" is free and almost as good as the Tactics Tranier here at chess.com.
Do not be shy to ask questions.
Where do I go from Here?
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I would recommend, for tactics, www.chesstempo.com. Great site, plenty of nice people around, and free.
I agree with the comments above: play a lot, analyze your games, do a lot of tactics. This is what I am doing, and it seems to be working so far!
Good luck,
Andrea
Solving problems, playing people of appropriate rating. If you are interested in reading a basic book, there are some very inexpensive books from Dover available. I guarantee you can find stuff (I do!) on amazon.com for less than $5. Two old books that I'd recommend are Irving Chernev's "Logical Chess Move by Move" and "Chess the easy way" by Reuben Fine. In general it is important to be able to answer the question "what am I or my opponent trying to do?". Put simply, checkmate. That is made easier if a person has more material, or a better position. How to get more material? Besides blunders, it's about picking up on something the other person doesn't. My favourite? Double attack! Your opponent can (of course) only move one piece. That's known as a basic tactic. Since you've got computer programs those can be very helpful. Play against them, and when you make a bad move, take back your turns and see what you could have done better. By doing this you can't avoid learning. Many people in the beginning get in trouble for (in my opinion) not developing well, and exposing themselves to attack. The computer and chess.com games will help you learn about all that. Good luck.
The 'Winning Chess' Series of books by Yasser Seirawan are well worth a look- particularly the one on Tactics. Not free unless you borrow from a library but definitely good value.
I've found chesstactics.org to be excellent. It explains the thinking. I've found tactics problems to not be that helpful because often you can get it right and have no idea why. This teaches you too look for problems
Cheers for the advice guys! I'm very greatful that you all took time to answer my query. I think you are right. It doesn't matter how many mistakes you make at the start as long as you learn from them, and you can only learn so much from analysing and reading. I will probably upgrade my chess software at some stage but Fritz 5 is more than a match for me at the moment. I will definitetley check out the resources. Thanks again.
Ok, so I've decided to join the chess community. I've registered with the best chess site on the web, I'm armed with Fritz 5 and Chessbase 2007 Light (both freeware) and at present I play live chess on FICS (using BabasChess). Both ways I get thrashed, very quickly. Where do I go from here? I am a relative beginner. I understand some of the basic concepts and I know there are a lot of free resources out there (the emphasis has to be on 'FREE' unfortunately). But I simply do not know where to start. Any advice or suggestions?