Daniel Naroditsky, a chess grandmaster who started out as child prodigy and quickly became one of the most influential American voices in sports, died Monday. He was 29 years old.
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 every day,” his family said in a statement shared by the center.
The cause of death was not immediately known.
Naroditsky became a grandmaster, the highest title in chess outside of world chess champion, at the age of 18.
Years earlier, the California-born player had won the world under-12 championship and spent his teenage years writing chess strategy books while climbing the world rankings.
He was consistently ranked in the world’s top 200 in traditional chess and also excelled in a fast-paced style called blitz chess, maintaining himself in the top 25 throughout his adult career. Most recently, Naroditsky, known as Danya, won the U.S. national blitz championship in August.
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His fellow grandmasters credited Naroditsky with introducing the sport to a wider audience by live streaming many of his matches and sharing live commentary on others. Thousands of people regularly tuned in to YouTube and the interactive streaming platform Twitch to watch Naroditsky play.
“He loved streaming and he loved trying to be educational. The chess world is very grateful,” Hikaru Nakamura, an American grandmaster, said during a live broadcast Monday.
In a final video posted Friday on his YouTube channel titled “You Thought I Was Gone!?” Naroditsky tells viewers he’s “back, better than ever” after taking a creative break from streaming. He explains his moves to viewers as he plays games of chess live on the computer from a comfortable studio.
Other elite chess players around the world took to social media to express their shock and sadness.
Dutch chess grandmaster Benjamin Bok spoke of his long-standing friendship with Naroditsky, whom he said he has known since the under-12 world championship Naroditsky won in 2007.
“I still can’t believe it and I don’t want to believe it,” Bok said on
Naroditsky was the son of Jewish immigrants who came 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 then studied history at Stanford University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 2019 after taking a year off to compete in chess tournaments.
After college, he moved to Charlotte, where he coached the area’s top junior chess players.
