Oh, the 'Forbidden' symbol! It means ...

kAtalan_csaT

Updated: Apr 8, 2025, 1:29 PM | 6

... It means that the user was using computer assistance and his/her account was closed for violating the Fair Play Policy!

Not so fast, you could be wrong - at least I was!

An unexpected complexity

A Chess.com user account could be closed for several reasons, for example:

Chess.com can close the user account for violating the Fair Play Policy
Chess.com can close the user account for not following the Community Guidelines
the user can close his/her user account
the user can ask Chess.com to close his/her user account
for other reasons (from the User Agreement: "... You agree that Chess.com may, with or without cause, and without prior notice, immediately terminate, suspend, disable or delete your Chess.com account...")

But the symbols (i.e. signs, icons) and texts expressing the above facts are sometimes overlapping, incomplete or confusing.

The table below contains the symbols and texts indicating that the user account was closed. They appear in various places: on the profile pages, in the games archive, on pop-up windows, in club member lists, etc.

symbol	short description	reason of closure (long description)
	Closed: Fair Play	This account has been closed for violating our Fair Play Policy. These rules help keep chess fair for everyone.
	Closed: Abuse	This account has been closed for not following our Community Guidelines These guidelines help keep Chess.com fun and friendly for everyone.
	Closed: Inactive	username closed their own account on mmm dd, yyyy.
	Account Closed	(empty)
	Account Closed	(empty)

When a user account is closed:

On the profile page, the symbol and the short description are shown next to each other, beneath the username (replacing the first and last name and the user's location) and the long description below them.
In other places (the pop-up window, for example), the symbol is next to the country flag of the closed user account and replaces the flair. The short description is only displayed when the mouse cursor hovers above the symbol.
- The pop-up window is shown when one clicks on the name of the user account on a web page in a text with an @ character in front of it, for example, @CHESScom.
- The pop-up window contains valuable information about the user account that is closed: it shows the full name of the user and the date when the account was opened. It used to contain the last date the user was online, but that feature was removed in 2024.
- In the following tables, the last online date of the closed user is shown. It was copied from the pop-up window while that information was available. If the user account was found when this date was no longer available, the date of the last game finished is shown with ??? added. The earliest of these dates in each category is bolded.

It is clear from the table that two of the three symbols (the symbols and ) have multiple meanings! The Account Closed short description also has multiple meanings, and when used, no reason is given why the account was closed. It seems that the symbol plus short description combination defines the status of the closed user.

A lot of users were baffled by the above complexity and asked for an explanation. It has been explained several times in various Forum topics by Chess.com staff, for example by @Martin_Stahl (in Account closed) or by @MGleason (in Account closure- Different symbols and their meanings), that in version 2 of the Chess.com software, until a certain date, only one symbol (the symbol) and two short descriptions (the Closed: Fair Play and the Account Closed descriptions) were used - and the latter could have meant multiple things, without a specific reason given!

In other words, the Closed: Fair Play combination was unambiguous even in version 2 (and still is), but the Account Closed combination was not...

When almost everything is known...

It is unclear exactly when the two new symbols (the symbols and ) and the two new descriptions (Closed: Abuse and Closed: Inactive) were introduced. The information about the date when a user account was closed is not available publicly, except when the account was closed by the user. However, there are user accounts which suggest that the new symbols and descriptions were used even before version 3 of the Chess.com software (for example, @ozzy_INACTIVE). Version 3 was officially launched on January 22nd 2016: Introducing The New Chess.com (Version 3). With these additional symbols and descriptions, almost everything is known:

The Closed: Abuse combination is also unambiguous.
It seems that the new symbol was introduced to mark those closed user accounts that were not banned. It indicates that the user account can be reopened - I know some users who succeeded in reopening their accounts (for example, @Steven-ODonoghue)!
- The unambiguous Closed: Inactive combination with the given reason indicates the fact the user did close his/her own account.
- The unambiguous Account Closed combination is supposed to cover the situation when it was Chess.com that closed the account.

The following table shows some of the closed user accounts where almost everything is known:

symbol	short description	closed user accounts (with the last online date of the user)
	Closed: Fair Play	@4h_TiTo (2008-04-18), @aymankkk (2008-09-03), @explosive131 (2008-04-06), @HORUS (2008-04-21), @Lizard87 (2009-08-09), @R0N4LD1NH0 (2008-04-25), @Razboi (2010-01-27), @reymercado90 (2008-08-10), @TigranLPetrosyan (2020-10-01), @Viih_Sou (2024-05-02), @WhiteLady53 (2021-08-23), @zacimast (2008-04-06)
	Closed: Abuse	@beptee (2022-06-22), @daddy-inactive (2007-11-08), @jessiexoxo (2022-04-26), @Shalukthebest (2022-01-12), @slick (2007-08-17), @sweetpotato777 (2021-05-10)
	Closed: Inactive	@amr1001old (2017-06-19), @Former_mod_david (2022-06-11), @jumbo-closed-2008 (2008-02-18), @ozzy_INACTIVE (2007-09-06), @Quick_chess_Champ (2021-12-15), @Tasmanian_devil7 (2022-02-11)
	Account Closed	@abuse (after 2020-08-30 ???), @Baurzhan1963 (2022-06-11), @BlueSailor (2022-11-23 ???), @gdpr0412 (2007-09-21), @JMA_crazyfish (2022-05-24), @poladashvili2003 (2023-07-04 ???)

One of my goals is to find the earliest ban for violating the Fair Play Policy! For the time being, I have found two such user accounts, @explosive131 and @zacimast - both users were online on April 6th, 2008, and the short description of the accounts is Closed: Fair Play! The earliest banned user found is @slick, banned for Abuse, who was online on August 17th, 2007.

An Ambiguous Legacy of Version 2

The Account Closed combination remains the only ambiguous one. But even in this case, some facts might be deduced!

When a user account is closed, neither the date when the account was created nor the date when the user was online for the last time is shown on the profile page. This information can only be retrieved from the pop-up window. It becomes a useful tool for evaluating the true status of the closed user account to see whether the account was created and/or closed in version 2 or version 3 of the Chess.com software.

If a user account was closed but the user was not banned, then all the posts of that user are still visible. So if something can be found that was posted by the user with a closed account, it proves that the user either closed the account himself/herself or asked Chess.com to do it.

If nothing can be found, then it is still possible that the user did not post anything, but it is also possible that the user was banned for abuse in version 2.

The following table shows some of these users:

symbol	short description	closed user accounts (with the last online date of the user)
	Account Closed	@amac7079 (2009-01-08), @AndreCurtis (2009-02-12), @billwall (2016-01-23), @krompz (2008-08-20), @Michelle_Dahle (2014-10-12), @penguinsurfer (2013-10-15), @rjlanc (2013-06-24), @Zhane (2016-01-30)

I have found the following:

a Forum topic posted by @amac7079: Privacy and google searches
a post by @AndreCurtis in the Forum topic: Why do you play chess?
the complete set of Articles posted by @billwall: billwall's Articles (@billwall was one of the first users of Chess.com and one of the most prolific and revered authors of the site; it is a well-known fact that he closed his account)
a post by @krompz in the Forum topic: My blitz game with batgirl
a Forum topic posted by @penguinsurfer: L'APERTURA PER PRINCIPIANTI
a Forum topic posted by @rjlanc: Iphone App update
a group whose owner is still @Zhane: Zhane's Family!

All the above information is visible and accessible, therefore, these users were not banned!

But nothing can be found produced by @Michelle_Dahle; based on the publicly available information, nothing certain can be said about @Michelle_Dahle... We only know that if that user was banned, it was because of abuse.

An anomaly: user accounts with contradictory information

The most baffling are those user accounts where the information on the profile page differs from the information on the pop-up window (and other places: games archive, club member lists, etc.)! The following table contains some of these user accounts.

	profile page	pop-up window, etc.	closed user accounts (with the last online date of the user)
1.	Closed: Fair Play	Close: Abuse	@Artemis471 (2024-07-04)
2.	Account Closed	Closed: Fair Play	@AlishaPinks (2022-05-28)
3.	Account Closed	Closed: Abuse	@WorstpIayeroftheworld (2024-06-17)
4.	Account Closed	Account Closed	@Amirrr56 (2011-03-24), @Ensdfsdfglish (2007-11-23), @divineforce71 (2020-09-03), @ItalianGame-inactive (2010-06-24), @JMD-inactive (2008-10-23), @lopes_INACTIVE (2011-07,28), @PDpvak-inactive (2014-04-14), @Sanju_1996d-Incative (2022-11-03)
5.	Account Closed	(the user account is shown as not closed)	@Cassini-Huygens (2015-03-16 ???), @CHERRYGLITTER555 (2009-07-20), @Dannyh3065 (2009-05-07), @darkghoul (2017-06-18 ???), @Diakonia (2017-03-09 ???), @Eden-68 (2025-03-27 ???), @eragonfan125 (2013-11-01), @FChopin99 (2016-05-20 ???), @Fellippo (2012-09-30), @godwinslaw (2012-08-22 ???), @Hussain (2013-12-13), @ichabod801 (2010-04-14 ???), @IMDeviate (2012-06-01 ???), @Lady_Of_pLeisure (2008-05-06), @LeotheLion402 (2011-04-14), @MikeDoyle (2013-11-04), @MirceaH (2009-02-06), @orangehonda (2011-02-21 ???), @ouachita (2018-01-29), @PaulinevN (2009-08-25), @PaulineYB (2010-01-23), @pawngenius (2012-10-21), @Ridzwan (2008-05-30), @Roche (2014-03-13), @rosyflamitto (2016-05-27), @sanjeev_fighter (2014-07-11), @snrf (2010-11-10), @Spike_Mason (2009-03-15), @steinitz80 (2011-08-15), @systemovich (2013-04-05), @The_pLeisure_Sisters (2008-05-01), @trishgarcia (2014-09-30), @Zuzana_Suzana (2014-08-21)
6.	Account Closed	Account Closed	@bulletheadbilly (2023-09-03)
7.	Account Closed	Closed: Abuse	@ali2xz (2021-07-12 ???), @Amiel081 (2021-07-10), @Honey_money (2021-03-08 ???)

The user accounts from the first, second, third and last groups are almost certainly banned.
The last group is the most controversial: the information on the profile page suggests that the user account was not banned and can be reopened, but the information on the pop-up window suggests the opposite!
Most of the user accounts from the fifth group were closed long ago, after the official launch of Version 3 on January 22nd 2016. Some of them were closed after that date. It is unknown if any of the users from this group were banned.
Despite being shown as not closed on the pop-up window, all the user accounts from the fifth group are closed. On their profile page, the symbol plus short description combination replaces the following fields beneath the username :
- the First Name and Last Name fields,
- the icon for the Location and
- the Location field.

These contradictions might be remnants of older software bugs or transitional situations (for example, there could be an ongoing investigation). Because of that, some of the above information may change in the future.

Oh, the 'Forbidden' symbol! It means ...

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