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Daniel Naroditsky, a standard-bearer in the world of competitive chess who flourished in the COVID-19 pandemic, died on Monday at the age of 29, leaving a legacy as one of the game’s great players who helped usher in its digital age.
American Grandmaster won many championships and gained hundreds of thousands of subscribers youtube, cramps And other platforms, where he will livestream matches and explain tactics in real time. But he also had to struggle with the cyberspace he helped create.
High-speed games became extremely popular online during the pandemic, creating a chess community that was soon filled with allegations of cheating as players gained access to sophisticated computer programs that could give them unfair advantages.
Naroditsky’s untimely death has shone a light on the dark underpinnings of the game, which fellow professionals say left the chess star facing unfair criticism and hostility in his final months.
His cause of death has not been released.
legacy of integrity
Naroditsky was troubled by unfounded claims of cheating by Russian grandmaster and former world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik, whom Naroditsky called one of the “heroes” he looked up to as a young player.
The California-born professional had refuted the claims as he excelled at blitz and bullet chess, where players have only a few minutes to finish intense matches. He was vocal about how the allegations affected him.
“Since Kramnik, I feel like if I start doing good, people assume bad intentions,” Naroditsky said in his last livestream filmed before his death on Saturday. “The issue is just the long-term impact.”
He thought about his legacy and hoped that other top players would rely on him to play with integrity.
Grandmasters and other chess professionals around the world have lauded Naroditsky as a respected ambassador of the game, using his online platform to make chess accessible to all. His family said in a statement that they hope he will be remembered for the joy and inspiration he brought to people every day.
Naroditsky became a Grandmaster at the age of 18, which is the highest title in chess other than World Chess Champion. He was consistently ranked in the top 200 worldwide for traditional chess, and won the US National Blitz Championship in August. He spent most of his time coaching young players in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“Daniel was an incredible teacher and lecturer of chess and concepts and ideas,” said Daniel Weisbarth, co-owner of the Silver Knights Chess Academy in Fairfax, Virginia.
International Chess Federation President Arkady Dvorkovich said the organization would establish an award in memory of Naroditsky and his contributions to chess. Dvorkovich described the young grandmaster as talented, kind, and a genuinely good person.
blame game
Many professionals this week called for an end to the constant finger-pointing that has followed players like Naroditsky who were successful in a fast-paced game.
Kenneth Regan, International Master of Chess and professor of computer science at the University at Buffalo, said the opportunity to cheat has increased as the cerebral game has moved online. There are many ways to monitor online games, but Regan said they are intrusive.
“The online fraud rate is 100 to 200 times the rate across the board,” Regan said. “From my perspective, there are five to 10 cases per year across the board.”
The popular Internet chess server Chess.com shut down Kramnik’s blog on the site in 2023, saying he had used it to spread baseless cheating allegations about “several dozens of players”. At the time, the forum warned of “Kramnik’s escalating attacks against some of the most respected members of the chess community and some promising young talents”.
The intense style of play popular in the digital arena of chess is somewhat dependent on the honor system.
Top talents analyze the board so quickly and move with such accuracy that accusations of cheating have become common. Bullet Chess is so fast that it is essentially “playing chess entirely with your guts,” Regan said.
nurturing young talent
Last week, Naroditsky posted a video on his popular Speedrun Chess series on YouTube, telling viewers that he was “back, better than ever” after a short “creative break”. Benjamin Balas, a psychology professor at North Dakota State, said his videos, in which he gave tips and discussed strategy, were great tools for chess players of different abilities.
“He’ll tell you ‘this is the kind of mistake you’ll see at this level,’ and he’ll also make mistakes and talk to you about how to manage them,” Balas said.
Other grandmasters such as Hikaru Nakamura and five-time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen are using social media to take chess to a wider audience, increasing its popularity around the world.
,PeopleThey see Daniel or other streamers and they start playing chess online,” said John Hartman, editor of Chess Life magazine. “Streaming personality, he takes people into the world of chess.”
Carlson credited Naroditsky for his work in the streaming space, saying he was universally loved and “such a resource to the chess community.”