American chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky dies at 29

Daniel Naroditsky, a chess grandmaster who started out as a child prodigy and quickly became one of the most influential American voices in the sport, died Monday. He was 29.

The Charlotte Chess Center in North Carolina, where Naroditsky trained and worked as a coach, announced his death on social media, calling him “a talented chess player, educator 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 all every day,” his family said in a statement released by the center.

The cause of death was not immediately known.

Naroditsky became a grandmaster, the highest title in chess other than world chess champion, at the age of 18.

A few years earlier, the California native had won the World Under-12 Championship and spent his teenage years writing books on chess strategy, rising through the world rankings.

He was consistently ranked among the top 200 players in the world in traditional chess and also excelled in the fast-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 noted that Naroditsky introduced the sport to a wider audience by broadcasting many of his matches live and commentating live on air for others. Thousands of people regularly tuned into YouTube and the interactive streaming platform Twitch to watch Naroditsky play.

“He loved live broadcasts and loved to try to be educational. The chess world is very grateful,” Hikaru Nakamura, an American grandmaster, said in a live broadcast on Monday.

In the latest video posted to his YouTube channel on Friday, titled “You Thought I Left!?” Naroditsky tells viewers he's “back and better than ever” after a creative hiatus from streaming. He walks viewers through his moves while playing live chess games on a computer in the comfort of his home studio.

Other elite chess players from around the world took to social media to express their shock and sadness.

Dutch chess grandmaster Benjamin Bock spoke about his long-standing friendship with Naroditsky, whom he said he has known since the World Under-12 Championship, which Naroditsky won in 2007.

“I still can’t and don’t want to believe it,” Bok said on X. “It has always been a great honor for me to play, train and commentate with Danya, but most of all, to call him my friend.”

Naroditsky was the son of Jewish immigrants to the United States from Ukraine and Azerbaijan. He was born and raised in San Mateo County, California, and was described by his parents as a very serious child with an impressive attention span and memory. He went on to study history at Stanford University and received his bachelor's degree in 2019 after taking a year off to compete in chess tournaments.

After college, he moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he coached some of the region's top youth chess players.

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This story has been corrected to show this is the Charlotte Chess Center, not the Charlotte Chess Club.