How unique and quirky are we?

When this website was launched in 2001 Facebook was still 3 years away from launch (think about that for a moment) and we lived in a world of dial-up internet access and downloading it via an AOL CD ROM (for example). We had Friendster, MySpace and Friends Reunited; all very basic connectivity and blog sharing.

Now in 2025, Facebook is essentially dead from the neck up and has become the internet equivalent of junk mail through your letterbox. The other sites are long gone. X is thriving but it’s hardly a place to “connect”. The world, online and offline, is a very different place.

And yet here we are. A small group of people still hanging out on this chess website’s forum pages.

@diver
And this site did not even have a forum in the early days.
When a forum was added, it was in a totally different format than what we now have. The whole site was a very different format, in fact.

I managed to find the RHP site by using one of the old antique search engines. I think it was called Webcrawler, or Netscape, or something like that. I just typed in 'online chess' and RHP came up.

We have come a long way since February, 2001!

If you open these pages, some of the underlined links will still open up and work so you can browse around a little. Welcome back to yesteryear! 🙂

https://web.archive.org/web/20010304170336/http://www.redhotpawn.com/
and
https://web.archive.org/web/20010514021527/http://redhotpawn.com/

@diver

i remember the good ole days
i still play chess in the nude
i know why @Russ won't let us post pictures
i've gotten older but not much less rude

remember that time in that facebook private room and the nipple contest?
i've still got that video somewhere

Thank god for unique and quirky.👍

@rookie54 said
@diver
remember that time in that facebook private room and the nipple contest?
i've still got that video somewhere

@diver

In fcat I am the new guy around, the chess site I had played previously had gone belly up and I looked for a new one using probably altavista or something....
This site was actually the first I subscribed to and I am renewing since.

@Ponderable said
@diver

In fcat I am the new guy around, the chess site I had played previously had gone belly up and I looked for a new one using probably altavista or something....
This site was actually the first I subscribed to and I am renewing since.

@diver said
2 years 10 months after you I joined, and was immediately trolled by Trev33 after my first post in one of the forums 😆

@diver said
2 years 10 months after you I joined, and was immediately trolled by Trev33 after my first post in one of the forums 😆

At the moment, I'm feeling rather shunned.