Chess's international governing body said on Wednesday it was considering disciplinary action against a former world champion from Russia who has repeatedly made unsubstantiated accusations of cheating. Daniil Naroditsky a year before the death of the American grandmaster.
The Charlotte Chess Center in North Carolina, where Naroditsky trained and worked as a coach, announced his death Monday. He was 29 years old. The cause of death has not been disclosed.
Russian grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik, who held the world title for several years, began accusing the California native of cheating in online games in the early 2000s. chess in October last year. Over the past year, he has continued to share his suspicions on social media without providing substantive evidence.
Naroditsky, who became a grandmaster at 18 (the highest title in chess after world chess champion), denied the fraud allegations and accused Kramnik of trying to ruin his life.
Arkady Dvorkovich, president of the International Chess Federation, said Wednesday that he has formally referred all relevant public statements made by Kramnik before and after Naroditsky's death to the organization's Ethics and Disciplinary Commission. He promised that the federation would take “appropriate action” in any case where there was public harassment or bullying.
Under its anti-cheating laws, the authority requires strong evidence to initiate a fraud investigation and can impose sanctions on a player who makes unfounded accusations based on emotions or insufficient data. There were no documented reports of an investigation into the Naroditsky case by the federation.
The Associated Press reached out to Kramnik via social media for comment on Wednesday.
The investigation began after several grandmasters, including Hikaru Nakamura and Nihal Sarin, criticized Kramnik's behavior, saying the Russian professional was harassing Naroditsky and trying to ruin his reputation.
Five-time world chess champion Magnus Carlsen called Naroditsky's relentless pursuit of Kramnik “terrible.”
During his latest live broadcast on Saturday, Naroditsky said in his massive online broadcast that Kramnik's claims of cheating had taken a toll on him.
“After the events with Kramnik, I feel that if I do well, people will assume worse intentions. The only problem is the lingering effect of this,” Naroditsky said, adding that Kramnik was one of his “heroes.”
This is not the first time Kramnik has been accused of harassment. Popular online chess server Chess.com shut down Kramnik's blog on the site in 2023, saying he used it to spread unfounded accusations against “many dozens of players.”
The following year, Kramnik published a list of players on social media called “Cheat Tuesdays,” which included Czech grandmaster David Navara. Navara later said on his blog that Kramnik’s public accusations pushed him to contemplate suicide. Kramnik responded by accusing Navara of slander.
In June, the federation responded to the players' public spat by saying that the way Kramnik was presenting his arguments was “greatly harmful to the chess community” and “could be destructive to the careers and well-being of some players.” The group invited Kramnik to submit details of his approach and statistics for formal evaluation.
Kramnik's anti-cheating crusade exploded with the game moving online during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many elite players have swapped the physical chessboard for a keyboard to continue playing in lockdown, sparking a surge in popularity for streaming content and fast-paced online gaming, which Naroditsky excels at.
It is known that mind sports players value respectful behavior at the board. But a new level of toxicity has emerged in the digital arena, with fraud allegations becoming more common and harder to prove. Players now have sophisticated computer schemes at their fingertips that can give them an unfair advantage, as well as new ways to profit from their online success.
In blitz and pool, where players have mere minutes to complete intense matches, top talent often moves with computer-like speed and precision, experts say. Naroditsky was ranked among the top 25 blitz players in the world and won the US National Blitz Championship in August.
“Recently, public debate in the chess world has too often gone beyond the bounds of what is acceptable, harming not only people's reputations, but also their well-being,” Dvorkovich admitted on Wednesday. “When this happens, discussions can escalate into harassment, bullying and personal attacks, which is a particularly serious problem in today's climate.”
Dvorkovich said that the federation would establish a prize in memory of Naroditsky.
Kramnik continued to post about Naroditsky on the day his death was announced, calling it a tragedy and speculating about the cause. Kramink wrote on social platform X that the death “should be investigated by the police.” On Wednesday, he wrote that he had received threats after releasing “public information about the 'dark side' of modern chess.”
