Chess Grandmaster Hikaru strikes Eric Hansen’s Chessbrah YouTube channel for copyright

Popular chess streamer and Grandmaster Eric Hansen, the main host of Chessbrah, has been handed 2 copyright strikes on behalf of content creator and chess master Hikaru Nakamura, leaving him on the edge of his channel being disabled by YouTube.

Hikaru is one of the biggest names in chess, a high-level player who has also built up a huge online following with his Twitch channel. He joined TSM in August. He’s by far the most popular chess streamer on the platform, but this has also brought with it some controversy in the past.

This includes some drama with sisters Alexandra and Andrea Botez, with whom he was upset about streaming in the ‘Just Chatting’ section of Twitch, rather than ‘Chess’.

Hansen is a streamer we picked out as someone to keep an eye out for in 2021, and by all accounts he’s seeing a fair amount of growth this year.

Shortly before finishing off his stream on Tuesday, April 6, Hansen revealed that Hikaru had been striking his channel.

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“I just can’t play,” he told his stream after losing a match. “Hikaru’s channel is striking our videos. One more and our channel gets deleted.”

Adding that he “just got an email from YouTube,” Eric says that he has to go and sort that out, especially if it means the potential loss of the channel entirely.

The copyright claim was made by Bent Pixels Select, who work with TSM and Hikaru.

In a statement to Dexerto, Bent Pixels said: “Bent Pixels provides copyright protection for its creators including many of our gaming partners. In this case chessbrah has uploaded two (2) videos that were direct copyright of one of our creators GMHikaru in which a takedown policy was applied.”

The YouTube upload now shows only a screen containing the copyright claim.

Of course, losing his whole YouTube channel would be a huge blow to Hansen and the wider Chessbrah crew.