On Oct. 19, American chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky was found dead in his Charlotte, N.C. home. He was a few weeks shy of his 30th birthday, and his death, which police say is being investigated as a possible overdose or suicide, has rocked the chess world. The U.S. Chess Championships held a moment of silence in his memory, tributes poured in from every corner of the chess community, and International Chess Federation (FIDE) president Arkady Dvorkovich announced that his organization would establish a special prize in Naroditsky’s honor. Making sense of such a tragedy is necessarily a delicate process, but in this case, it’s particularly difficult because of the nasty, internecine campaign that former world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik, who Naroditsky idolized, had been waging against the young grandmaster.
Naroditsky was a particularly beloved member of the chess community. His parents emigrated from the Soviet Union and raised him in the Bay Area, where he first made a name for himself before bursting onto the international scene when he won the U-12 World Championships. The championship win earned him the title of Master, and he ascended smoothly to International Master and Grandmaster by the time he was 18. Naroditsky regularly partook in U.S. Chess Championships, once beating top American player Fabiano Caruana, but his specialty was the fastest forms of chess on offer, and he was a distinguished player in blitz, bullet, and hyperbullet formats.
