Remembering Daniel Naroditsky (1995-2025)

How did we get here?

The first time I am aware of crossing paths with Daniel Naroditsky was at the start of 2013, and it almost didn't happen. It came at a moment when my personal life and professional chess career were both at their lowest points possible, having lost my father in April the previous year and having had no noticeable improvement in my chess-playing skills for some time. I was very close to cancelling my flight and calling off the whole trip because my heart was just not into playing another chess tournament. Possibly ever. But I thought to myself, "It's not what my dad would have wanted, so let's try to honor his memory by doing the best we can." So off to California I went.

It didn't get off to a great start. I got sick almost immediately and in the very first round, I was paired with an unrated player - bad news if you're trying to go for an IM-Norm. I sad-joked to a tournament director at the time, "I guess that means I flew all this way for nothing, huh?" I was then told the game would count as 2050 for IM-Norm purposes (I hadn't known that at the time), and I ended up winning that game. The second round was close to a disaster. I had played well and blew a completely winning position against one of America's top talents, tiny IM Daniel Naroditsky:

Confession time. I didn't review this game afterwards, being totally unwilling to uncover how many missed wins I must have had (You're not a true chess player if you're not still fuming some twelve years or so after a blown win). Oddly enough, this morning I went to my many stacks of scoresheets that have accumulated over the years, and, despite never having reviewed this game, I found the scoresheet within two minutes. Now I won't be able to review it for different reasons.

The next round was pretty funny, though. I was walking towards my board while little Danya was telling someone how lucky he had been the previous game. While he was mid-sentence, I smirked and looked over in his direction and our eyes met. I remember his face going bright red and he immediately stopped talking, out of fear of rubbing it in my face. I thought that was nice of him. Somehow, I would come out of that tournament with my first ever IM-Norm (of the current four), and I was on my way towards almost breaking 2400 FIDE and 2500 USCF (Which was good enough for around 80th in the country at the time) over the next couple of years. Looking back at the crosstable, that field was star-studded with future GMs: Daniel Naroditsky, Jeffery Xiong, Kayden Troff, Andrew Tang, Michael Brown and...Larry Kaufman!

My next run-in with Danya came at the Philadelphia Open two months later. My opponent, Tyrell Harriott, had thrown the kitchen sink at me earlier in the game, and we reached this position in round 7:

Unbeknownst to me, Danya's own game had finished early and he had been following mine online. I don't think I had even left the playing hall yet when he came bouncing up and down excitedly to me shortly after the game was over, grinning from ear-to-ear, doing a double fist bump in the air and saying, "Rook f5!!" like it was the best defensive idea he'd ever seen. "I was watching in my room, and I was hoping you'd find it!" he said. He didn't even know me, but his enthusiasm and love of chess knew no rating boundaries. I was touched that he was even looking at my game, because I was (and still consider myself to be) a chess nobody.

In the final round, he was on pace for his second GM-Norm, but his opponent was late. Very late. For those who don't know, all nine of your tournament opponents must arrive and play a complete game of chess for it to be counted towards your GM-Norm. He was pacing back and forth nervously, when again our eyes met. He came up to me, again with a wide grin on his face, and said: "If he doesn't show up...I'm gonna kill him!" He waved his fists at me. I laughed. The opponent eventually showed. Danya got GM-Norm number two of the needed three. He would finish the year as an official, legitimate Grandmaster.

After that, I don't remember any notable interactions with him for years, other than occasionally seeing his articles in Chess Life magazine, or hearing about him taking over the chess column at the NY Times, occasionally playing in the US Championships and, of course, his attending Stanford University. All of this was rather vague, however. I can't say I was paying super careful attention to any of this. I had my own problems. Then came 2020.

I was forced, er, introduced to the world of chess streaming on Twitch by world-renowned arm-twister (and sometimes-decent chess player) Carissa Yip. She insisted I watch her streams and play in her online COVID-relief blitz event. Well, there wasn't a whole lot else to do in the March of 2020 (If you know, you know), so I decided - why not. Eventually, I came across Danya's streams, and I stayed a loyal subscriber of his for 64 months (the irony of that number is not lost upon me). I asked him in chat if he remembered our game, and he absolutely did. "Oh, yeah! That was that Najdorf game, right? You were completely winning. I was lucky to escape." Or something to that effect. Danya's memory was exceptional. My favorite thing to do on his streams would be to say something so incredibly stupid, ironic or over-the-top, or tell a dad joke so abysmally bad that it would elicit a, "GTFO, Seth". And...I succeeded in that goal many a time Kappa.

Soon after the lockdown ended, I played in the SPICE Cup in St Louis and swung by the in-progress 2021 US Championships for a round or two. I made sure to wish Danya good luck before his game with Wesley So (Yeah, yeah, yeah...go ahead and play the Danya impersonation of Wesley laughing in your head right now if you wish) and I was shocked by how tall he had grown. Having had only watched him on stream since our last "IRL" interactions, he had still remained as "Little Danya" to me somehow. A few hours later, he came down the stairs with his trademark grin on his face, looked at me and said, "I'm a lucky..." before his voice trailed off. Or maybe it didn't. I'll never tell.

A month later at the US Masters in Charlotte, North Carolina, we wandered around together in search for food on Thanksgiving Day. No place was open, due to it being the holiday and all the restaurants and eateries still being heavily understaffed and keeping odd hours. In what would be our only lengthy time alone together, he complimented me on my flip-phone...saying he'd prefer to have one himself if he could (I, myself, resisted changing for as long as I could). We reminisced about the old World Chess Network (still the best chess website to have ever existed, in my opinion) and probably a couple of other topics that I can no longer recall. I greatly enjoyed, and still cherish, that brief time we had together, and I wish there had been more such moments.

Daniel Naroditsky was not only a fundamentally good man, but he was also a genius - a true polymath in every sense of the word. His knowledge of such a wide breadth of topics and corresponding depth of those topics was rivaled by only one another man that I have ever known - my dad. I'd often think how famously the two would have gotten along together, especially with everything Russian. Maybe they've already run into each other somewhere up above. I bet they have.

Danya's love of everything chess mirrored my own - we both held dear the chess classics (a seemingly dying thing in chess nowadays, for better or for worse) and we greatly enjoyed chess history. Whenever he reached over to his bookcase and pulled out an old chess book, I would stop whatever it was that I was doing during his stream and I would pay attention. We both idolized the chess players of old ("We stand on the shoulders of giants"), and he genuinely revered and adored the top elite chess players of today, never missing an opportunity to pay them compliments, respect and praise on stream, no matter what differences he may or may not have had with them behind the scenes. And...yeah. About that. Typing had been free-flowing and easy up until this moment, but now...with great difficulty...and out of respect for the moment and for Danya...I will not say what or how I feel about the majority of them now. One in particular.

It's not what Danya would have wanted, so let's try to honor his memory by doing the best we can.