Danya, Miss You Always

I first knew Daniel Naroditsky as a prodigy. He and I played in many events on the West Coast together, and I watched closely as this amazing talent geared up to surpass me. But Danya was always different from the other ruthless youth eager to destroy everyone in their path. Yes, he was cruel on the board, with a trajectory that would clearly be slowing down for nobody, but it was his smile and huge eyes that looked at you off the board, always with a deep sense of both innocence and curiosity… and with time, wisdom beyond his years. 

Who writes a book about positional chess at the age of 14? And a great book at that!? The answer is nobody but Danya Naroditsky. Many people don’t know that Danya’s first “gig” with Chess.com was actually as a writer/author for us! I remember talking to the late and great Jeremy Silman about who could possibly take over and help us serve interested chess readers online with the depth of his instructional knowledge, but also with fun and humor every step of the way. We both practically completed each other’s sentences - “Naroditsky would be great!” Silman would email me raving about how talented Danya was as a writer on a regular basis. Danya was at Stanford at the time, but he delivered for enthusiastic readers on Chess.com week after week. 

My first real conversation with Danya and his family was before he was even competing alongside me in the Open sections of events. Me and my young wife, with our newborn baby Nash, made the drive – I was only playing in events I could get to without flying at this time for health reasons – from Arizona to Agoura Hills California for the Pacific Coast Open in the summer of 2006. Upon arriving, and before the tournament started, we sat down for dinner at the hotel restaurant next to the “Naroditsky table” (not an official designation, but just that their entire family, Vladimir, Lina, Alan and little Daniel were seated already). 

It was fitting that we had a baby with us, because Danya (before the tall, lanky wunderkind we all saw him become as an adult) was still so small himself. He literally had to sit on a stool or a cushion at times to see over tables. Danya was so cute, kind and playful with our baby Nash that it made a lasting impression on my wife Shauna. When Danya and I later became coaches at our mutual friend Robby Adamson’s Western Invitational Chess Camp, Shauna would always spot Danya in the group photo and confirm again “that’s the kid from Agoura Hills right? He’s gotten so big! He was so sweet…”. 

Yes, he truly was. I’m not breaking any news with all the posts and shares at this point that Danya’s most likeable attributes were not his chess moves, his streaming style, his amazingly instructive yet always relatable and humorous commentary, but his kindness. Danya was sweet. The absolute sweetest person. 

Many have asked about Danya’s relationship with Chess.com, and why he wasn’t commentating as much (save a few ChessKid events for us this year - he really loved working with kids!). In November 2021, we brought him on “full time” to do more than just commentary, but to contribute content broadly, assist in product development (helping us make the live server as fast and snappy as possible, giving feedback only an elite bullet player can) and work with me on strategy where/how he wanted. He was pumped at the idea of building out a more “professional lifestyle” (his words), and he said he wanted something more stable that didn’t require “the grind” of streaming. For me, as I told Erik then, having Danya closely in the fold made me more excited than anything we had done in a long time.

Unfortunately, as Danya later quoted Steinbeck (classic Danya *edit/addition Danya was actually quoting the famous poem by Burns, which is quoted in the Steinbeck novel "Of Mice and Men" and because I'm not as cultured as Danya, I thought he was quoting Steinbeck, my apologies to those who noticed!) in a call we had “best laid plans of mice and men”. We learned together that Danya really didn’t enjoy the busy work of running a chess product/company. Further, he was still enjoying streaming more than he thought he would (though he continued to say he wanted to find more balance with it). He also had a lot of other duties outside of Chess.com, including in-person stuff at the Charlotte Chess Center, a few private students who he loved too much to stop teaching, and more.

So we restructured his working agreement to focus almost exclusively on live shows. However, things changed rapidly around the acquisition of PMG in late 2022. The chess calendar was crazier than ever over the next couple years, “host pairings” became a bit of musical chairs with so much of the world’s top chess talent now under one roof, and we relied heavily on our most experienced crew (Danya and Hess) being paired up together, but we also split up their talents more often than before to support hosts who hadn’t worked with us as much. This hectic time, along with the goal to push chess broadcasts into the mainstream, slowly took some of the fun out of things for Danya. It felt less “like streaming” as he put it, and more like a job.

I empathized with him in all of our conversations – sharing how much I personally missed “hanging on the couch” with Fabi and Hess during the 2021 World Championship coverage too! – and we continued to adjust everything we could, make changes to how the team operated, and generally worked toward the best space possible for everyone, even into early 2025 where he was still doing more regular shows than anybody.

I have never yet addressed this, but nobody should be surprised to know that anything Danya talked about publicly – sharing his struggles on podcasts and anywhere else he did over the last year – we talked about in much more depth privately. I fully understood why he wanted to do more laid back, streaming style commentary. The long hours and grind of being a chess commentator is tough, and if you’re not having fun, and even more so, if you’re under a ton of stress because of things that have nothing to do with commentary, it starts not feeling worth it. 

But when Danya finally decided to fully step back around February of 2025, I pleaded with him to reconsider. I even pushed harder than I’m proud to admit, focused too selfishly in a brief moment of panic on how I could ever replace him, losing sight of the big picture. When Danya made it clear to me that this was about his own personal mental health more than anything else, I apologized for pushing so hard for him to keep doing commentary, and made sure he knew we (and I personally) would, of course, support whatever he needed. 

The commentary/broadcast door was always open for Danya, and I’ll never stop looking at it wishing he could still walk through. The weight of the cruel, baseless accusations against him hit home in ways that nobody could really imagine. I knew that he was struggling with this and not always coping with things in the best ways. He and I would continue to talk about it many times over numerous phone calls, email exchanges and texts throughout this year, but we both knew he was doing the right thing. Regardless of what the chess community wanted him to do on the biggest Chess.com shows, he was trying to take care of himself, and we supported him, despite missing his “work” daily.

The truth is the relationship was in the best place it could be heading into the fall of this year, especially given everything he had going on. Danya was no longer trying to do more than he could or wanted, Chess.com had no expectations on him to do so, he had worked through the bumps around the rollout of Proctor with our Fair Play team (being in our Team Slack, he was able to converse with Kassa (Korley) and Dan (Rozovsky) regularly), and I was personally supporting him with conversations over text, email and the occasional call whenever needed. Our hope was that Danya would continue to work on becoming his best, happiest self, eventually returning to the chair he loved most. Because he really did love the broadcasting chair the most!

Danya Naroditsky was happiest when he was educating others. The genuine joy he felt in thinking/knowing/feeling that he had found an effective way to explain (and inspire!) someone toward learning chess (and really, becoming a better version of themselves!) is what made him happy. As Danya and I learned together, the other “professional lifestyle” stuff he thought he wanted didn’t actually fill his cup. But I feel confident that if not for the external factors attacking his mental well-being, he would have eventually found his way back to commentary. 

But Danya was humble to a fault. And sadly, his love for educating others was also matched with his desire to please. When he wasn’t able to please one of his heroes into thinking good of him, no matter what so many people close to him said or did, his sense of self-worth was lost more and more and more with each passing day, week and month. I say that not even to cast more blame than is already being projected online, but to say that I also know that Danya knew this “part of him” needed to change. And that nobody could change it but him. We talked about it. He said it out loud himself and acknowledged that this part of his personality had existed long before the attacks became what they were. That he needed to make and find peace within himself in order to be at peace with people’s ridiculously fictional, negative thoughts about him.

The horrible part of Danya stepping back from commentary was not that we all missed him and wanted him back, but that he felt he had to take himself out of the thing he loved because of other elements around it. The pressure he felt being on camera in any “stream” that wasn’t his own channel became unbearable. I know for myself and Chess.com that I/we would support Danya 10x times out of 10x times again with what he wanted. Even with that said, I will likely never stop replaying how I possibly could have created a different environment, platform, surrounding, etc. to support Danya. I know that I (like all those close to him in any fashion) was doing the best I could based on what Danya said he needed, and I just wish I had known that he needed more.

As I shared with Danya's mother and brother at his Celebration of Life ceremony, all I can do now is strive to ensure that Danya’s memory lives on and that he continues to be celebrated for being all the things the chess community should aspire to be. Danya was always amazingly kind and wholesome, and the chess world is not always that way. Together, we can all work to build a kinder, more wholesome, more positive chess world - the world that Danya wanted. Fortunately, I and Chess.com have a platform and ability to have an impact in years to come. Change will not happen overnight, but I believe we can become the chess world and chess community he would have wanted.

Danya truly was the epitome of what we all want to believe is best about chess players/thinkers at their core. At our best, we are curious, not judgmental. We are students of the game and life, but without the arrogance of certainty, because we’ve been humbled too many times to think we could ever have it “solved”. We are lovers of all things (arts, movies, philosophy, and the human experience), with an insatiable appetite for bringing this joy we’ve found in the game (and the things it metaphorically touches) to others. 

Danya was all of those things at a level that the rest of us can only (and should only!) aspire to be. Danya was the best of all of those things. And he deserved better.

With love, heartache and more tears to come, I want you to know how much I’ll miss you, Danya. That I will never stop looking at you with love and fascination at what brilliance and kindness combined and embodied in one person can look like. It was you. In your eyes and in your words. And I am so, so sad that we will not have more time together in this life. I know I will see you again someday.

I love you, Danya.

Danny