Chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky has died at 29. Image courtesy of UPI
Daniel Naroditsky, a chess grandmaster, author and popular streamer, has died. He was 29 years old.
No cause of death was given for the man who became a grandmaster at 18.
He was a head coach at the Charlotte Chess Center in Charlotte, N.C. The center announced his death.
“It is with great sadness that we share the unexpected passing of Daniel Naroditsky. Daniel was a talented chess player, commentator, and educator, and a cherished member of the chess community. He was also a loving son, brother, and loyal friend to many,” the center said in a statement attributed to Naroditsky’s family on X. “Let us remember Daniel for his passion for chess, and for the joy and inspiration he brought to us all every day.”
The International Chess Federation posted a statement on X, saying, “he was a talented chess player, commentator, and educator. FIDE extends its deepest condolences to Daniel’s family and loved ones.”
Naroditsky was born to Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union. His father was from Ukraine and his mother from Azerbaijan. He learned chess at age 6 from his older brother Alan. “It wasn’t love at first sight,” he told the New York Times in 2022. “It was a gradual process. A lot of my best memories are just doing stuff with my brother.”
He won the Under-12 World Youth Championship in Turkey, then published his first book two years later, Mastering Positional Chess. He published two more books after that. He got a degree in history from Stanford then moved to Charlotte for full-time coaching.
He was a contributor to Chess Life magazine and the New York Times. On YouTube, he had half a million followers and more on Twitch.
Charlie White, a popular YouTuber who studied under Naroditsky, said he was “such a wholesome presence in the chess community, and the world is a worse place without him. I don’t know if we’ll ever see another person like Daniel: so instructive, so entertaining, and so patient.”
