Daniel Naroditsky’s Death Exposes an Existential Threat to Chess

In July, the American grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky played a speed chess game against the Swedish chess master and popular streamer Anna Cramling. Three months later, after Naroditsky was found dead at 29—a tragedy that has shaken the chess world—a video of the game went viral.

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To even the odds, Naroditsky had accepted half as much time as his lower-ranked opponent to make all his moves. He also agreed to play blindfolded. 

As the players set up the board, the grandmaster seems introverted, a little awkward, but the moment the clock starts, he is at home. After each of Cramling’s moves, which she announces in the algebraic language of chess, Naroditsky responds instantaneously: “d4,” “knight bd2,” “queen a4.” Though his eyes are covered, he can perfectly picture the rapid movement of the pieces across the board. No wonder so many of his friends and fans shared the video: It shows a one-in-a-billion mind in full flow. 

Growing up in California, Naroditsky was often the country’s top-ranked player in his age group. When he was 11, he won the World Youth Chess Championship in Turkey, earning a master title along the way. At 14, he became the youngest published chess author, releasing a book on positional play—slow, maneuvering chess of the sort most prodigies eschew in favor of spectacular sacrifices and pyrotechnic attacks. In his final years, he came to be widely seen as America’s greatest chess educator, and—his penchant for puns notwithstanding—a commentator of unmatched wit, warmth and charm. 

Yet for all his talent, Naroditsky’s legacy is inevitably being shaped by the tragic circumstances of his death. No official cause has been released, though police say they are investigating the case as a possible suicide or drug overdose. What’s certain is that Naroditsky spent his last months trying to convince the world he wasn’t a cheater. And many chess players feel the game’s governing body failed to protect his reputation or hold his accuser to account. In its grief, the chess world is finally confronting a digital-age crisis that threatens the future of an ancient game. 

Once, cheating in high-level chess was extremely rare. At over-the-board tournaments, competitors had few ways to gain illicit advantage. But as computers surpassed top grandmasters and more tournaments moved online, players found new opportunities and incentives to break the rules. By the end of the pandemic, it was clear chess had a cheating problem. 

In 2022, the Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, the best player in the world, withdrew from a tournament after he lost a game to the young, up-and-coming American Hans Niemann. Carlsen felt Niemann’s win was suspicious. “He wasn’t tense or even fully concentrating,” Carlsen later wrote, yet he outplayed “me in a way I think only a handful of players can do.” Carlsen couldn’t prove his claim, and many grandmasters doubted it. Yet it soon emerged that Niemann had twice cheated in online events, once when he was 12 and once when he was 16. (The case gained worldwide attention after Elon Musk spread a dubious theory about the means of Niemann’s alleged fraud: messages remotely conveyed via vibrating anal beads.)   

In the aftermath of the scandal, Chess.com, the world’s leading chess website, vowed to be more transparent about cheating on its site. The platform’s first fair-play report revealed that over the years, it had caught hundreds of master-level players cheating, including dozens of grandmasters and four players in the top 100. The site’s co-founder and CEO, Erik Allebest, called cheating “a medium problem that is a big PR problem.” But it was also a cultural problem, sowing distrust in a community that, as the great Armenian-born grandmaster Levon Aronian once said, was already “pretty much paranoid.”

One player especially seemed to embody the growing culture of distrust: the former world champion Vladimir Kramnik. Once baselessly accused of cheating himself, the Russian grandmaster conducted his own statistical investigations, concluding that many top players were consulting chess engines during online games. While few doubted the problem was growing, many questioned Kramnik’s forensic methods—and his practice of naming names without proof. Kramnik would share lists, without comment, of players whose stats he deemed suspicious, insisting he was not making accusations, just raising questions. Those named, however, felt accused. 

David Navara, the Czech Republic’s top grandmaster, who is widely viewed as an honest player, wrote an essay on the toll that appearing on one of Kramnik’s lists took on his mental health. Navara pleaded with the game’s governing body, FIDE, to discipline the former world champion. The experience, he wrote, brought him to the brink of suicide.

In October of last year, Naroditsky appeared for the first but not the last time on one of Kramnik’s lists. The suggestion that he might have cheated wounded him deeply. One quality that distinguishes the very best chess players is killer instinct, an almost animalistic will to win. By contrast, Naroditsky, who went by Danya, the Russian diminutive of his first name, was known for his gentleness, his sensitivity. He had never cheated, he insisted, yet now he felt his legacy had been tarnished. He said he had lost his reason to get up in the morning. 

In December 2024, he showed up at the World Rapid and Blitz Championship in New York City, looking to clear his name. He played exceptionally well, finishing ninth in the blitz (very fast) portion of the event. Yet the boyish enthusiasm and goofiness that chess fans had come to know from his commentary and YouTube videos was no longer evident. He looked pale and drawn. Ten months later, he was found dead in his apartment in Charlotte, N.C.

As the community grieved, many also expressed anger. Few believed Naroditsky had cheated, and many wanted to see his accuser held to account. Under pressure, FIDE announced that Kramnik’s conduct would be reviewed by its ethics committee.

The debate over Kramnik’s crusade highlights a larger dilemma. Carlsen has called cheating an “existential threat” to the game. But combatting the threat is hard, especially given that most cheat detection is probabilistic. If certainty is the threshold for discipline, many cheaters will evade accountability. That is almost certainly happening now. If, on the other hand, a lower threshold is used—and many, including Kramnik and other top players, say this is necessary for cleaning up chess—some non-cheaters are likely to be caught in the net, with potentially dire consequences for their careers, reputations, and mental health. 

The cliché of the grandmaster whose mind has been tied in knots contemplating the abyssal depths of a chess game is largely a fantasy; despite a few high-profile cases, no statistical link has been established between skill in chess and madness. Still, the mental health pressures of elite chess are real, if more mundane: the loneliness of life on the road, the anxiety of a high-pressure job in which self-worth is inextricably linked to winning, the terrible lows of defeat and the addictive highs of victory. The climate of suspicion isn’t helping.

We will likely never know the full extent or exact causes of Naroditsky’s suffering. Following his death, his mother, Elena, said she hoped her son would be remembered not for his pain or the tragedy of his passing, but for his “passion and love for the game” and the “joy and inspiration he brought to us all every day.”  

Proof of these qualities can be found in the video of Naroditsky’s game against Cramling. Chess is a humbling pursuit. Even its best players often get lost, fumble through. Blindfolded, Naroditsky is in the dark. Yet still he discovers among the game’s nearly infinite possible directions a path. His voice rises as he finds it, first—“rook takes g5”—removing the defenders around Cramling’s king, then—”queen takes knight”—forcing it into the corner, then, finally— “rook g2”— delivering checkmate. 

The other players in the room look on, transfixed, some laughing at their colleague’s dazzling brilliance. Naroditsky removes his blindfold and smiles shyly. Cramling starts laughing, too. 

“Danya,” she says, awed. “Danya.” She can hardly believe it.

If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental-health crisis or contemplating suicide, call or text 988.