Red Hot Pawn
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| URL | http://www.redhotpawn.com/ |
|---|---|
| Commercial? | yes |
| Type of site | Correspondence chess server |
| Available language(s): | English |
| Owner | Russell Newman and Chris Moreton |
| Created by | Russell Newman and Chris Moreton |
| Launched | 2001 |
| Current status | active |
Red Hot Pawn is a global correspondence chess server with over 200,000 registered members that was founded in February 2001 by the authors of Rival Chess, Chris Moreton and Russell Newman.
Among correspondence chess servers Red Hot Pawn is said to have the most vigorous forums. The vigor of the forums is due primarily to the "wolfpack", a group of posters whose breadth of expertise and general intellectual rigor keep the forums from devolving into undifferentiated chaos.
Although many players there prefer short games (one day timeout), the most common time controls are three, seven, and fourteen days per move plus an optional additional timebank of seven, fourteen, twenty-one or twenty-eight days. Most games take one to six months to complete, but they can take much longer. In the event of a player not being able to move within the timeout limit, they use up their timebank.
Chess on Red Hot Pawn is not played on a downloadable applet. Instead, a Javascript chessboard is used as the interface.
Members with free (guest) accounts are limited to six games at a time; subscribing members are not limited in the number of games that they can play, and have other benefits. Among these are the option of joining teams (known as clans) and participating in grouped challenges, as well as tournaments and sieges. Guest accounts are subjected to advertisements and blocking them is considered fraudulent use of the site.
The Red Hot Pawn site operates under several domain names. Apart from a visual difference, they are identical.
In 2006, Random House published a book by author David Shenk called The Immortal Game. The creators of Red Hot Pawn were approached to create a brand of the site in the style of the book. This brand can be found at http://www.playtheimmortalgame.com
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[edit] Clans on RHP
One of the alluring features of Red Hot Pawn is the "Clan" system, the RHP term for teams. Clans compete against each other to achieve overall scores, which are measured in total points and net points. They also taunt or goad one another in a forum designed for this purpose. Clans compete in matches organized by each clan's leader, as well as in several leagues. RHP has more than 250 clans ranging from one to twenty members. Clans gain points equal to the number of games played in the match each time they win a match against another clan; they split the points if a match is drawn. The Jewish Clan currently (March 2007) stands second in total points and has both the most wins and the most losses. They are third in net points (points gained - points given up). Metallica tops both lists.
[edit] Tournaments at RHP
RHP has regular tournaments including:
Banded tournaments - with rating restrictions.
Themed tournaments - with all games starting form the same position.
Unbanded tournaments - with no rating restriction, the largest so far being the annual Championship.
[edit] Web Browsers at RHP
Red Hot Pawn supports multiple web-browsers, but the user Ouroboros has utilized the Greasemonkey script to make this site more powerful and customizable to each player's preference. These scripts are only supported with the Mozilla Firefox browser. Being replaced by his now available Firefox extension.
