Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky has died
old.reddit.com
old.reddit.com
I soon realized that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be ranked, and I was fine with that because lichess had become an outlet. An outlet from the horrors of COVID. An outlet from the shock of a brutal war in Europe. An outlet from my failing marriage. An outlet from the world turned upside down in the US. I could always find solace in a rapid game on lichess.
Danya... I plateaued around 1400 and often found it hard to follow his gameplay on his speed runs. He was thinking 4-5 moves ahead while I was trying to avoid simple blunders. But Danya was easy to listen to, humble, and he helped instill a love in me of being very honest in my game evaluation. He also seemed like an incredibly charitable player; when it was obvious someone was cheating, he always gave them the benefit of the doubt, even when stockfish made it clear what was happening. His charity and kindness was endearing.
The world is a much lesser place today.
Also the player pool for the latter is much larger. Not sure if that has an impact on elo which is basically normalized across playerbase
But thank you for your kindness.
Danya seemed like a great person. Someone you'd want to hang out with. A great chess player for sure. I heard the news earlier and was filled with sadness. Such a loss.
I'm 6 years older than Danya, and we shared the same beloved chess coach in the Bay Area. I played him in a tournament game when I was 17 and he was 11, at the Mechanics Club in SF. I was an NM, and he held me to a draw. (Afterward he told me my position was better when we agreed to a draw, which was news to me!)
Around that time Danya won the World Under 12 Championship. Americans almost never win those events, and it was a big big deal in the American chess community.
But to me, most impressive was when in 2007, at age 12, in 6th or 7th grade, he won a much easier tournament, the California High School championship. I had won it the previous year, as an 11th grader - my crowning achievement. We all knew then that Naroditsky was a generational talent, but it was something special that this child - very tall for his age, but still oh so young - beat up all the serious high schooler competitors.
He then went to Stanford, and took an introductory CS course taught by my brother. Everything I heard indicated he was an exceptional contribution to Stanford's culture. He had such wide interests and curiosity, and became a history major. He probably was the most erudite chess player of his generation, reading (and writing!) books at a huge clip.
I remember vividly in his early streaming days, long before Danya became an internet chess celebrity, he was taking challenges while I was watching, so I logged in to the site and played him. I managed to beat him in a blitz game in front of all of his viewers. He was mad! I'm a strong blitz player but he is world-class, consistently a top ~10 blitz player in the world for the last 10 years. (I used to watch him on the old terminal-like chess server, the Internet Chess Club, under the handle "Danya", as he destroyed everyone while still a preteen and largely unknown.)
I don't want to add to the speculation to what happened to him. Suffice to say, I am not convinced by the story people are jumping to.
He will be deeply missed, and he will not be forgotten. He was absolutely unique and a gem of the chess world. Farewell, Danya.
It might have been wise to respect his privacy and not talk about him publicly and while he was alive and could read it, but now that posting it cannot affect his mental health, perhaps mental health awareness is important to talk about.
(A side note, I still think the privacy of those who pass away is important, but I think talking about mental health is also important.)
"BeccaHarris: I took a Benadryl to make sure I got 8+ hours of sleep, it hit me a lot faster and harder than expected. before I knew it 15+ mins had passed and I nodded off a few times, and suddenly poeople were freaking ou"
https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/1obo71s/comment/nkhb...
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2017/06/sleep-disturb...
The chance of this even reaching them is infinitesimally small. We’re not standing around talking about it with them in the room, we shouldn’t be pretending like we are.
Low quality blogs and "news" reporters also directly pull from online discussions, and before you know it, hypothetical drug use is a major discussion point, which is unfortunate.
Most other internet forums that I've been on I would not say this about.
I'm not sure what you think "morbid" means.
Describing a university course on infectious disease as "morbid" would be incorrect.
He was also only 29 years old.
I’m actually in tears right now struggling how to break this news to my son, who absolutely loved Danya and had a chance to play him OTB last year.
No matter what we find out in the next few days, I wish authorities had taken Kramnik’s cyber bullying more seriously. It’s a stain on chess that this is allowed to continue.
To take the conversation in a more technical direction, there are pretty clear parallels with “AI detector” technology which also could be (and I’m sure has been) life ruining. For both writing and chess, there are no authenticity detectors, only circumstantial evidence.
The comments on that video was so kind and heartwarming where people wished him well.
While we don't know the exact cause, we can all agree that he was subjected to extreme bullying and no one stood up for him - most importantly FIDE!
Kramnick may have been forthright and lacking tact, but it was clear from Danya's behaviours that he sadly had an underlying psychological condition that could happen to any of us.
Of course, as ever, Kramnick had nothing to back up his claims, a fact which in no way prevented him repeating them ad-nauseum.
That's not being "forthright" or "lacking tact". That's being an abusive asshole.
Kramnick accuses Danya of cheating (several pieces of circumstantial 'evidence' in the thread): https://x.com/VBkramnik/status/1911179469773033512
A tweet by IM Kostya Kavutskiy of ChessDojo from November 2024 (paraphrased):
> Our intention was to express concern for what's going on. Many of us supported Kramnik's fight against online cheating for some time.
> But then he started naming players left & right, some of whom were likely 100% innocent, who got their name dragged through the mud regardless. Kramnik also started naming actual children at one point, without any real evidence from what I could tell
> And it's not "just asking questions", it's casting aspersions. And the words of any world champion obviously carry a lot of responsibility.
Kramnick's bullshit never made any damn sense at all.
Kramnik has accused of online cheating virtually every grandmaster bar some of the top 10 and none in the community gives Kramnik much weight on this topic.
OP is not blaming him specifically for Danya's death. Irrespective of that, Kramnik is behaving like a total cunt and treated Danya like absolute shit for no reason beyond his own pathetic delusions.
Naroditsky isn't even the youngest person Kramnik has bullied: he's doxxed fucking children and accused them of cheating.
I watched Hikaru's YouTube video this morning and it's clear that Kramnik's accusations were getting to all of his victims. Naroditsky was giving Kramnik's opinion weight, whether he took his own life, or passed of other causes.
So yes, Kramnik needs to be shunned and frozen out of the chess world and any decent company for the way he's behaved.
If you are famous, you will have haters, it's part of the deal.
I agree with the crowd who say that mental health issues should be taken seriously instead of kept under the rug.
Staying on the Internet and be dependent on it in some way financially working as a streamer with all the short form communication and negativity online. Together with cyber bullies etc. A lot of things creating a perfect storm for what seemed to be a sensitive and very nice guy. Easy to say that his family and real life friends should have seen it too and make him change path but in reality it is difficult. Especially since things that make it worse like sitting down and playing chess all day / night and not getting enough sleep, together with cyber bullies is also the things that you love, you earn money on and you have many of your friends there.
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-is-the-speculation-onl...
Having struggled with these same issues for most of my adult life I'll just say it's nothing to be ashamed of and if you or someone you care about is in pain or struggling, don't hesitate to reach out. There are resources out there for you and it doesn't make you weak for using them.
US: 988 Lifeline https://988lifeline.org/
US, Canada, UK & Ireland: Crisis Text Line https://www.crisistextline.org/
Worldwide list of resources: https://findahelpline.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@DanielNaroditskyGM/videos
https://www.twitch.tv/gmnaroditsky
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/12/crosswords/chess-columnis...
They were fabulous, and I especially enjoyed his commentary. May he rest in peace.
I was an avid watcher of his Stream while he was regular streamer and commentator (amongst the best in the world), unfortunately saw the effect of his once idol Kramnik's accusations had on him, having to constantly prove himself, even in is his last stream [1], playing beyond exhaustion to the point his friends had to get him to physically switch off his stream, but he didn't want to because he was worried that if he had good results off stream that people would raise questions.
Kramnik was an ex World Champion, became unhinged and started indiscriminately accusing many GMs who beat him in short time controls of cheating, absurd claims made from his bedroom watching streams playing detective, where he accused #2 GM Hikaru that he had access to an evaluation bar which his editors added on his games he reviews before publishing them to YouTube [2]. In addition to torturing Danya with accusations for a year he also drove GM David Navara to depression [3] who he is currently trying to sue for defamation.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbk-mvBmLUM
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/1dtlvcb/kramnik_beli...
[3] https://www.chess.com/blog/FormerProdigy/because-we-care
I told him his name is Danya and he teaches people how to play a game.
</3
I cried at the end too.
Having said all that, the prevailing wisdom in the suicide-prevention field is that we are each responsible for our own decisions. I.e. Kramnik, long may he suffer, is not "responsible."
Anyway I don't live in your kafkaesque reality and do not wish to.
Danya's videos were amazing, and provided so much insight into this thought process and chess.
rest in peace.
He was so incredibly kind and an amazing teacher.
Apparently he did a stream where he looked pretty bad. It's too late to help Danya but if you ever see a friend in a bad place hopefully this reminds you to take action.
There's something oddly devastating about seeing people pass away in these online communities. I've never been one to really be affected by celebrities passing away, but I remember a few years when Geoff Robinson died (who was active in the Starcraft scene) that one hit me surprisingly badly as well.
Obviously it's banal in a sense because you always know people can die, but there's something very weird about seeing someone livestream one day and then you just get a headline like this on the next.
ChessBase coverage at https://en.chessbase.com/post/daniel-naroditsky-1995-2
He will be missed!
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rqPeGKVPbA&t=1834s
I would love to donate some to his family if anybody has a link to share.
One of the best live commentators, and among a generation of savvy chess influencers he seemed particularly sincere and without motivation beyond love of the game and communicating it's brilliance to others.
RIP GM Danya
To swiftly terminate that thread, it is not a hoax; his North Carolina friend Oleksandr Bortnyk confirmed it on his video stream.
Rip danya
A former chess world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, has turned into a sort of self satire seeking out cheaters in online chess. Basically everybody is cheating according to him, he even implied Hikaru Nakamura, the 2nd strongest player in the world, could be cheating.
Eventually his sights fell on Danya. At first I thought they were both kind of playing it up as a sort of a joke. For instance after the accusations Danya did a video where he had something absurd like a dozen different cameras watching him play from different angles. And in response Kramnik mentioned some petty absurdity that I can't even recall at this point - maybe there was a laptop on a chair or something? 'What is that computer Danya, suspicious, him?' And this sort of nonsense continued on for some time.
I still think Kramnik is doing it as a half-serious joke, but Danya clearly took it very seriously. He believed that his reputation had been ruined (even though just most people think Kramnik is the one who has mostly destroyed his own reputation and mostly just seen as a bit 'kooky' now a days) and Danya became a dramatically different person over about 2 years.
Previously he was kind of a happy go lucky blitz obsessed guy. But he gradually became increasingly morose and insecure. He also seemed to be losing weight, though I have no idea if that is accurate - I'm basing it solely on outside appearances which can be misleading. In any case, this was almost certainly related, and it makes the whole situation far darker.
I can't imagine how awful his friend and boss feel right now. He was behaving extremely erratically on his final stream to the point that they dropped by at 1am (granted that's more like 3pm in typical chess player time) to try to get him to stop playing, calm down, and just go to bed. They're obviously going to be asking themselves if they could have done more. The same is even true of Hikaru who recounted his last conversation with Danya, which was again about trying to help him up, and he teared up while again wondering if he could have done more.
And the catalyst for his decline was the cheating accusations. Yet the one 'mitigating' thing for Kramnik is that Danya really fell out of touch with reality with regards to the accusations. He made it clear that he felt many, if not most, people felt he was cheating. But in reality, basically nobody did. Kramnik has become basically a meme to the point that his accusations hold about as much weight as being called a naughty name online.
Of course from Danya's perspective it was going to be much more painful because he mentioned that Kramnik was one of his chess idols growing up. And people don't understand the amount of work it takes to become very good at chess. To then have one of your idols turn around and claim you're cheating, which is essentially pissing on all your work, is going to sting. And Danya had an immense, substantially more than average, amount of reverence for the title of world champion, which he felt that was causing people to believe Kramnik.
He felt the world was turning against him, but it simply wasn't. And the catalyst for this change was the accusations.
This [1] is from his final stream, and it's clear he was already at the breaking point. I feel most awful for his friend Bortnyk (one of the two voices you hear in the background there essentially having an intervention), he's going to be beating himself up thinking he could have done more, for years to come.
Everybody could see Danya deteriorating, but somehow I think nobody really realized just how 'real' it was. Magnus, who also regularly followed Danya's streams, has mentioned that he somewhat regrets not coming out publicly in defense of him. Probably in part because his views on cheating were already somewhat tainted at this point, and probably in part because nobody wanted to be the next person Kramnik started going after.
And another point in the video where it gets quite dark: https://youtu.be/112JImX_cWM?t=2615
Such an awful thing to see such an amazing person melt away and ultimately leave this world. Literally about a week ago I was recommending him on here to people trying to learn chess. His ability to teach was unparalleled.
As it is, he's already behaved in awful ways: accusing children of cheating without evidence, for example, and effectively doxxing them.
there’s an interesting (but not necessarily causual in either direction) link between chess and depression https://www.chess.com/blog/AstroTheoretical_Physics/chess-pl...
either how, RIP
When applied to war we celebrate the general’s brilliance. When applied to economics we say they had excellent foresight. When applied to any human endeavor, except chess, the accomplishment is celebrated as a human achievement.
This is due to humans placing great value upon thinking and planning ahead. Only the intelligent exhibit this behavior.
But, having watched some of Naroditsky's videos, it seems pretty clear that he was in fact very intelligent as well as very good at chess.
(from Wikipedia)
Intelligence is multifactoral. Being good at chess was one aspect of intelligence in the complexity of Daniel's life, and in anyone's life.
"'Even in our book, we don’t want to call this theory a complete myth, but instead label it as ‘nuanced’."
> Why? Well, the basic idea behind this theory is that people are different, and maybe you’ve noticed – they really are. People have different interests, different abilities, different moods, etc.
The author isn’t saying that the multiple-intelligence theory is itself valid. Rather, in an educational context, there is a kernel of value in the idea that different students are different. That’s entirely consistent with intelligence being a single thing.
Formal definitions aside, it isn't possible for "stupid" people to be good at chess. There also is no other animal or known alien that is good at chess. Thus being good at chess is a strong sign of an intelligent human.
We can't go the other way. There are plenty of humans generally known to be "intelligent" who are not good at chess. There is a lot more than intelligence needed to be good at chess (practice and study come to mind, there might be more).
While there are no known aliens that are good at chess, that doesn't preclude that we may discover them in the future. (not in your lifetime though - the speed of light is too slow for them to learn the rules of our chess and communicate back proof that they are good, no matter how intelligent they are)
Were you entertained when he publicly dissed his pregnant wife for her play in the recent US Championships?
I get it that lots of chess nerds enjoy this kind of thing, but that doesn't make it intelligent.
Or if you like tests ... he himself has mentioned not scoring well on an IQ test.
I wasn't interested in chess but I could see their entire plan unfold on the board. Unless they were actually good I didn't even try to win, in stead I let them unfold their plan into their own demise.
My winning streak ended when I got to play against the best kid from a different school. His was the biggest brain I have ever seen from the inside. He pretty much violated basic principles of the game in a way that still bothers me 35 years later.
The game was much to open to really look far ahead. The way one would play against a computer. His actual goal was to trade his knights and bishops for two pawns each!?!?! He pulled off 3 such trades. He carefully set up the trades and it made no fkn sense.
Then came a really long and slow pawn push that didn't allow me to trade my knights and bishops for more than a single pawn.
It took so many moves that he pretty much convinced me that 2 bishops and a knight are worth less than 5 points. I haven't seen a second game like it but I'm still 100% convinced.
But I think where people get confused is in the inverse. If you take a very smart person and he dedicates two years of his life to chess, all alongside training from some of the world's best, then he's still going to be, at best, a strong amateur at the end. In fact I know at least one instance where this exact experiment was tried. This is generally unlike other fields where such an effort would generally put you well into the realm of mastery.
But that's the unconscious competence part - chess takes many years of very serious training to even start to have it become 'natural' for you, and it's that point that your training journey begins all over again because suddenly things like opening preparation starts to become critical. So it can give the appearance that since seemingly smart people don't do particularly well at chess, while people like Magnus who has/had (daddyhood changes a lot...) a complete 'bro' personality, is arguably the strongest player of all time, it gives the impression that being smart must not be a prerequisite for success at chess.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9879926/
Playing competitive chess may trigger depression because of the constant comparison of people better than you.
The statement from CCC doesn’t mention him having a kid. Pretty sure he did not have one.
How could anyone possibly know this?