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Topic: What's the best way to find stronger opponents to play?
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Many chess books recommend playing opponents slightly stronger than oneself. One will be able to learn chess skills from stronger opponents and thus improve faster.
As a new player on QueenAlice, I wish to establish a good provisional rating, and this entails finding stronger opponents to play against (and obviously achieving good results). Please suggest the best ways to find stronger opponents to play with.
I previously played at GameKnot, with a rating hovering in the C class. GameKnot offers a list of online players I can look through to find opponents of suitable ratings to challenge. In addition, it offers several types of chess competitions, such as leagues, to meet stronger players.
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You can do the same here, look at the members list. If you want an advice from a patzer: Play as much as you can...and have fun, of course.
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you can enter the open tournament. If you have success in the first round you will advance to the second round and will face stronger opponents
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look at the members list den u will find opponents that suit you(choose yourself) 
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Thanks for all the suggestions.
I have found many strong opponents through the list of online members.
I find the parameters I can set when starting new games less restrictive than those on GameKnot. I can restrict games to opponents with ratings much higher than mine.
The open tournament is good, but I often meet opponents weaker than me. This is why I suggest QueenAlice introduce more types of competitions.
My favourite competition at GameKnot was the league. Basically, you can challenge opponents in your division, and your league score is adjusted when a game ends, and when your league score reaches a certain level, you'll be promoted or relegated accordingly. In this way, you will eventually be playing in a division with opponents around your strength, similar to a Swiss system.
Teams are an integral feature at other sites I've played at - GameKnot, Red Hot Pawn and ChessHere. I noticed that there is very strong support for teams on these sites, and many players have a deep loyalty to their team - this increases the "stickiness" factor of the site. With it's great community, QueenAlice would benefit immensely from such a feature.
I understand that QueenAlice is still under development, and I will continue to find stronger opponents using existing means and hope QueenAlice introduces more types of competitions while I'm still testing the site.
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