Play Chess Online
Join a vibrant community of chess players. From beginners to experts, find your match and engage in casual games, tournaments or team play.
What is Red Hot Pawn Chess?
Not only a great platform for online chess, but a large and active chess community.
Daily Chess
Rather than complete a game in one session, play chess at your own pace by playing our correspondence style game. Receive optional move notifications by email.
A Chess Community
Leaderboards, ladders, chess clubs, public forums, blogs and private messaging - there are multiple ways you can learn, interact and compete with other players.
Team Play
Join a chess 'clan' and challenge rival clans in competitive team matches to battle for position in the clan leaderboard.
Chess Tournaments
Regularly scheduled open tournaments where you can test your mettle against players worldwide. Or join a club to play tournaments exclusively for club members.
And More...
Play live chess, with variant support. Or practice unrated games against an AI. Study openings, puzzles or the vast games explorer to improve your game.
Est. 2001 - 23 years of online chess
Some features are not available to standard members
Play Chess Anywhere, Anytime
Enjoy chess on your terms
With our seamless platform, play on your desktop, tablet, or mobile. No boards to set up, no pieces to lose. Unadulterated stress free chess. Your next move is always just a tap away.
Sign up on the web or scan to get the app for your device.
What People Are Saying
Outstanding chess site. Best I've played on. Loaded with players at every level. A chess enthusiasts' dream site.
Definitely the best chess app for online play. Easily the slickest and best chess app I've used, with lots of regular updates to improve the ui and features.
Love playing chess here. you can set the timeouts to adapt to your play style, for instance I can't be in it all the time but don't want to wait forever, so I can set more of a sometime today you need to play.
A great place to play turn-based, correspondence style chess on the internet!
This app got me playing chess after a break of about 30 years.
I have been a subscriber for 2 years now and love it
Common Questions
When I complete games, will I have a rating?
After joining each player has a provisional rating until 20 rated games have been completed. Once your rating is established your rating will update as rated games are completed. Rating calculation details can be found in the site FAQ.