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Daniel Naroditsky, a chess grandmaster who started out as a child genius and soon became one of the most influential American The voices in the game died on Monday. He was 29 years old.
charlotte in the chess club North CarolinaWhere Naroditsky trained and worked as a coach, announced his death on social media, calling him “a talented chess player, teacher and beloved member of the chess community.”
“Let us remember Daniel for his passion and love for the game of chess and for the joy and inspiration he brought to us every day,” his family said in a statement shared by the club.
The cause of death could not be immediately known.
Naroditsky became a Grandmaster at the age of 18, the highest title in chess other than World Chess Champion.
Years earlier, the California-born player had won the Under 12 World Championship and spent his teenage years writing chess strategy books while climbing the world rankings.
He was consistently ranked in the top 200 worldwide for traditional chess and also excelled in a faster-paced style called blitz chess, maintaining a top 25 ranking throughout his adult career. Most recently Naroditsky, known to many as Danya, won the US National Blitz Championship in August.
Fellow grandmasters credited Naroditsky with introducing the game to a wider audience by livestreaming many of his matches and sharing live commentary on others. Thousands of people regularly join YouTube and interactive streaming platforms cramps To see Naroditsky play.
“He loved streaming, and he loved trying to be educational. The chess world is very grateful,” U.S. grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura said in a livestream on Monday.
In a final video posted to his YouTube channel on Friday titled “You Thought I Was Gone!” After taking a creative break from streaming, Naroditsky told viewers that he is “back, better than ever”. He talks the audience through his moves while playing live chess matches on a computer from a cozy home studio.
Other elite chess players from around the world took to social media to express their shock and grief.
Dutch chess grandmaster Benjamin Bok reflected on his lifelong friendship with Naroditsky, saying he had known him since the Under 12 World Championship which Naroditsky won in 2007.
“I still can’t believe it and don’t want to believe it,” Bok said on X. It was always a privilege to play, train and commentate with Danya, but most of all, to call her my friend.
Naroditsky was the son of Jewish immigrants to America from Ukraine and Azerbaijan. He was born and raised in San Mateo County, CaliforniaAnd his parents described him as a very serious child with impressive attention span and memory. He studied history at Stanford University, earning a bachelor’s degree in 2019 after taking a year off to play in chess tournaments.
After college, he moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he trained the area’s top junior chess players.