chessbae removed as moderator from Chess.com amid drama

Chess community member chessbae94 has had her moderator rights and privileges removed from the popular website Chess.com after several incidents involving her and other prominent chess players and personalities.

The announcement, made by Chess.com’ CCO Danny Rench, comes days after chess Grandmaster Eric Hansen spoke out about a copyright strike made on his YouTube channel. Hansen pointed towards fellow Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura as the culprit behind the strike. As she is involved in the management of Nakamura’s YouTube channel, chessbae responded to the accusations. 

chessbae claimed that the content strike was carried out by Nakamura’s multi-channel network and that she would try to resolve the issue. But since then, Hansen has made it clear that he believes the strike was carried out manually by either chessbae or Nakamura. Hansen went as far as deleting all  videos featuring Nakamura from his chessbrah YouTube channel in an effort to safeguard against any future claims.

Response from Chess.com from r/chess

Chess.com has now decided that this incident was the straw that broke the camel’s back. All of chessbae’s privileges on the site have been revoked, and the site has distanced itself from her. In a post on Reddit, CCO Danny Rench pointed towards the copyright strike situation as the main reason for the drastic measure.

“While we do wish to clarify that chessbae has never been an employee of the Chess.com company, she has worked with us on behalf of streamers to coordinate and grow their channels through Chess.com,” Rench said. “And while we appreciate the skills, passion, and commitment of Chessbae to grow chess and the streamers she works with, we recognize that her methods and communications have at times been problematic, and we feel this reached a head recently with her handling of the copyright strike against the ChessBrahs.”

Hikaru Nakamura has also said that chessbae would take on a lesser role in managing his affairs moving forward. chessbae herself has spoken to stepping away from the prominent role she has held in the community, even if only temporarily. For now, she remains a moderator in many prominent chess channels.