Daniel Naroditsky and the Chase of Beauty

I certainly wouldn’t tell you that I knew Daniel Naroditzky well, but I did know him; we met a couple of times in Charlotte, we exchanged a couple of emails, and today is an utterly crushing day. Daniel — or Danya, as he was often called — was one of the greatest chess players on earth. He died on Tuesday. He was 29 years old.

I want to tell you a couple of things about Daniel because his death has hit hard, but I suppose that whenever anyone who is 29 years old dies suddenly, the question that overpowers every other is: “Why?” There are no answers to that right now, at least publicly. There is only speculation. And it is rampant. A few months ago, a former world chess champion named Vladimir Kramnik publicly accused Daniel of cheating. Kramnik, alas, has made it his life’s mission to accuse great chess players of cheating. The accusations against Daniel appeared to be entirely baseless. Some of you might even remember that I wrote a little something here in defense of Daniel.

It was no secret that those false but relentless accusations cut Daniel deeply. He talked openly about that. Many in Daniel’s sphere will tell you that he was never the same joyful person after being persistently charged with cheating at the game he adored. Many in the chess community, including the greatest chess player in the world, Magnus Carlsen, are pointing directly at those accusations now. It’s all so heartbreaking.

Daniel so thoroughly loved chess. He liked other things too — he really liked the Golden State Warriors and could talk all day about Steph Curry — but he found magnificence and joy and comedy and philosophy and hope in this game of kings and queens and pawns. He learned how to play chess from his older brother, Alan, when he was 6 years old. This was not the worn-out story of a prodigy learning the game and having everything click into place and immediately becoming unbeatable. No, Alan beat him regularly those first few months. Daniel did not remember instantly falling in love with chess; he just liked doing stuff with his older brother.

But the passion did come, and he was indeed a prodigy — by the time he was in the fifth grade, he was the No. 1 player in the United States for his age group. In 2007, he won the under-12 world championship. At 14, he became a grandmaster, the highest title in the chess world. Many called him a future world champion.

Then he turned from chess. He went to Stanford and got a degree in history. His parents encouraged him to get a corporate job and stay in California. Instead, he moved to Charlotte to live a chess life.

And that’s what he did — he lived chess. He played. He studied. He taught. It was the last of these that seemed to move him most deeply; he seemingly never tired of talking and teaching chess. He was an otherworldly teacher; Daniel had an extraordinary ability to make extremely complicated concepts clear and vivid. He became pretty famous for his late-night videos (his YouTube Channel has half a million followers). He would record himself playing chess for hours and hours in the wee hours of the morning and explain his thinking, move by move.

“It’s really late, so I’ll only play one more game,” he would say, but then he would come upon some interesting position, and he would get energized, excited, he would race back to his seemingly inexhaustible chess library and pull an ancient-looking book from 1893 or 1935, and he would spend an hour recounting some game played between two chess titans from all those years ago.

Daniel played players of just about every level in those late-night sessions, yes, but my favorite was when he played beginners. It was magical how he would bring these matches to life, and how simple he made this impossible game seem — take control of the middle, be patient, develop your pieces, trust yourself, learn from your mistakes, and it will all work out just fine.

There was something else about those beginner games that I think of now; it’s not easy to explain to someone who doesn’t play chess, but it is worth trying because I think it speaks to who Daniel Naroditsky was. There are many, many popular chess streamers out there — including some of the best players on earth like Hikaru Nakamura, hugely popular chess creators like Gotham Chess’ Levy Rozman, entertainers like the Botez Sisters — but Daniel was his own thing because of how profoundly he loved the game.

And you would see it in those beginner and intermediate games. He so enjoyed playing earnest chess players, the sorts of people who tried to stick to those principles Daniel held dear. He didn’t like it when his opponents would move out the queen early, go for the famous four-move checkmate, try for some cheap trick. When that happened, Daniel played ruthlessly and finished off games as quickly as he could. He didn’t like it when people disrespected chess or didn’t treat it seriously.

But when the opponent was clearly trying to play chess right, no matter how lowly rated they were, Daniel played slowly, respectfully, admiringly. He offered constant praise.

“I have to give a lot of credit to my opponent here,” he would say when they showed fight, mettle, when they fended off attacks.

And now and again in those games, something would happen. Daniel would be playing calmly like always, and then he’d see something. A combination. It might be a three-move series or a nine-move sequence, but he’d see it, and he’d light up, and he’d say, “Oh, there’s something so beautiful here.” These were heavenly concepts, things only a handful of people on earth could see.

And then he’d do it, he’d make a move that seemed to make little sense, then another, and then a third, and only then would the fog clear for the rest of us, and we’d see how he’d set up the most perfect checkmate.

Then he would apologize for playing at such a divine level against a chess mortal. “But,” he’d add, “sometimes something is so beautiful you just have to do it.”

That’s the Daniel I remember: The young man who chased beauty.

Daniel used to do these videos all the time — daily, it seemed. A few months ago, after the cheating accusations — even as so many in the chess world came to his defense — his videos became less and less common. In recent days, he hardly did any videos at all. It was like he disappeared. I sent him an email to show my support. He did not respond.

Then, four days ago, Daniel recorded an instructional video like the old days. It is hauntingly titled You thought I was gone!? He began like so:

“You thought I was gone forever, but, uh, little do you know, I’m back and better than ever. I know that the episodes have been few and far between. I’ve been sort of taking kind of a creative break, deciding, you know, future avenues of content. So I won’t delve too much into it right now.”

I won’t lie: He didn’t look good at the start. He seemed nervous, anxious. But then he started playing. And, with that, some of that joy for chess returned. He played an opponent that stubbornly defended well against his checkmate attack. As usual, he gave his opponent a lot of credit for that. He smiled some, made fun of himself for playing a few inaccurate moves, told a couple of small jokes. He went back to his library to find out why opening with pawn to c4 is called the “English Opening.” And he ended by reminding everyone to spend a little time analyzing their games, studying their mistakes, learning from them.

“That’s how you improve,” he said.