Terms of service
Last updated 30 August 2026
These are the rules for using Esahist.ro. They are written to be read, not to be skipped — if a term here would surprise you, that is a fault in the term, not in you.
Signing in means you accept them. If you do not, do not sign in; you can still read the leaderboards, profiles and games without an account.
Who may use it
You need to be at least 16. One account per person: extra accounts are how ratings get inflated and how suspended players come back, so they are removed when found.
Your account
You sign in with Discord, GitHub, Facebook or Google. We never see your password for those, and we cannot recover access to them — if you lose the account you signed in with, you lose the account here.
What happens under your account is yours. If somebody else plays on it, those games are still your games and that rating is still your rating.
Fair play
This is the part that matters most, because a rating is only worth what the games behind it are worth. While a game is running, you play it yourself:
- No engines, no analysis boards, no opening books, no databases — nothing that suggests or checks a move.
- No help from another person, and nobody else playing for you.
- No losing on purpose, and no throwing games to move your rating somewhere it does not belong.
- No stalling a lost position to run somebody out of patience, and no leaving games unfinished as a habit.
Playing openings you have studied, or moves you know by heart, is not cheating. Consulting anything during the game is.
How you treat other people
No abuse, harassment, racism or threats — in chat, in a username, in a status, in a picture, anywhere. No spam and no advertising. Your username and avatar are seen by everyone on the site, so they are held to the same standard as anything else you say.
Your games and your rating
Finished games are a permanent, public record. They stay on the site, with the moves, the clocks and the result, and they can be found by search engines. A game has two players, so it is not yours alone to delete.
Ratings are calculated by the site and may be recalculated or corrected — after a suspension, or when a game is found to have been played unfairly. A rating is a measurement, not property.
What you write and upload
Your username, status, location and picture stay yours. By putting them on your profile you allow us to show them on the site, which is the only thing we do with them. Do not upload anything you do not have the right to use.
Membership
- The site is free and stays free. Membership is support, not a gate: it unlocks nothing, and nobody is at a disadvantage without it.
- Membership is monthly and handled by Stripe. It renews until you cancel. Cancelling keeps it until the period you have already paid for runs out, and nothing is charged after that — we do not refund the part of a period you have already had.
- If you are in the EU you normally have fourteen days to withdraw from a purchase. Ask within that window and we will refund the payment.
Reports and suspension
Anyone can report a player, and moderators read those reports. Where an account breaks these terms it can be suspended. A suspension refuses the next game the account tries to join; a game already in progress is not stopped.
We do not publish the details of how unfair play is detected, because doing so would tell people what to avoid. If you think a suspension is wrong, write to us and a person will look at it again.
Availability
This is a chess site run for the love of it, not a service with an uptime guarantee. It may be slow, it may be down, features may change, and it may one day stop. We will give notice before shutting anything down permanently if we are in a position to.
Liability
The site is provided as it is. As far as the law allows, we are not liable for losses arising from using it — a lost game, a lost rating, or time you would rather have spent elsewhere. Nothing here takes away rights you have as a consumer, and nothing here limits liability for anything the law does not allow us to limit.
Changes
If these terms change, the date at the top changes with them. Changes that materially affect you will be announced on the site rather than made quietly, and continuing to use the site after that is how you accept them.
Which law applies
Romanian law, and the courts of Romania. If you are a consumer elsewhere in the EU, this does not deprive you of the protection of your own country's law.
Contact
Questions about any of this, or about a suspension, go to:
support@esahist.roPrivacy
What the site stores about you and why is a separate document, and it is worth reading:
Read the privacy policy