FRESH
Hacker News
Hacker News Hacker NewsI soon realized that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be ranked, and I was fine with that because lichess had become an outlet. An outlet from the horrors of COVID. An outlet from the shock of a brutal war in Europe. An outlet from my failing marriage. An outlet from the world turned upside down in the US. I could always find solace in a rapid game on lichess.
Danya... I plateaued around 1400 and often found it hard to follow his gameplay on his speed runs. He was thinking 4-5 moves ahead while I was trying to avoid simple blunders. But Danya was easy to listen to, humble, and he helped instill a love in me of being very honest in my game evaluation. He also seemed like an incredibly charitable player; when it was obvious someone was cheating, he always gave them the benefit of the doubt, even when stockfish made it clear what was happening. His charity and kindness was endearing.
The world is a much lesser place today.
I'm 6 years older than Danya, and we shared the same beloved chess coach in the Bay Area. I played him in a tournament game when I was 17 and he was 11, at the Mechanics Club in SF. I was an NM, and he held me to a draw. (Afterward he told me my position was better when we agreed to a draw, which was news to me!)
Around that time Danya won the World Under 12 Championship. Americans almost never win those events, and it was a big big deal in the American chess community.
But to me, most impressive was when in 2007, at age 12, in 6th or 7th grade, he won a much easier tournament, the California High School championship. I had won it the previous year, as an 11th grader - my crowning achievement. We all knew then that Naroditsky was a generational talent, but it was something special that this child - very tall for his age, but still oh so young - beat up all the serious high schooler competitors.
He then went to Stanford, and took an introductory CS course taught by my brother. Everything I heard indicated he was an exceptional contribution to Stanford's culture. He had such wide interests and curiosity, and became a history major. He probably was the most erudite chess player of his generation, reading (and writing!) books at a huge clip.
I remember vividly in his early streaming days, long before Danya became an internet chess celebrity, he was taking challenges while I was watching, so I logged in to the site and played him. I managed to beat him in a blitz game in front of all of his viewers. He was mad! I'm a strong blitz player but he is world-class, consistently a top ~10 blitz player in the world for the last 10 years. (I used to watch him on the old terminal-like chess server, the Internet Chess Club, under the handle "Danya", as he destroyed everyone while still a preteen and largely unknown.)
I don't want to add to the speculation to what happened to him. Suffice to say, I am not convinced by the story people are jumping to.
He will be deeply missed, and he will not be forgotten. He was absolutely unique and a gem of the chess world. Farewell, Danya.
It might have been wise to respect his privacy and not talk about him publicly and while he was alive and could read it, but now that posting it cannot affect his mental health, perhaps mental health awareness is important to talk about.
(A side note, I still think the privacy of those who pass away is important, but I think talking about mental health is also important.)
He was also only 29 years old.
I’m actually in tears right now struggling how to break this news to my son, who absolutely loved Danya and had a chance to play him OTB last year.
No matter what we find out in the next few days, I wish authorities had taken Kramnik’s cyber bullying more seriously. It’s a stain on chess that this is allowed to continue.
To take the conversation in a more technical direction, there are pretty clear parallels with “AI detector” technology which also could be (and I’m sure has been) life ruining. For both writing and chess, there are no authenticity detectors, only circumstantial evidence.
Staying on the Internet and be dependent on it in some way financially working as a streamer with all the short form communication and negativity online. Together with cyber bullies etc. A lot of things creating a perfect storm for what seemed to be a sensitive and very nice guy. Easy to say that his family and real life friends should have seen it too and make him change path but in reality it is difficult. Especially since things that make it worse like sitting down and playing chess all day / night and not getting enough sleep, together with cyber bullies is also the things that you love, you earn money on and you have many of your friends there.
The comments on that video was so kind and heartwarming where people wished him well.
While we don't know the exact cause, we can all agree that he was subjected to extreme bullying and no one stood up for him - most importantly FIDE!
I was an avid watcher of his Stream while he was regular streamer and commentator (amongst the best in the world), unfortunately saw the effect of his once idol Kramnik's accusations had on him, having to constantly prove himself, even in is his last stream [1], playing beyond exhaustion to the point his friends had to get him to physically switch off his stream, but he didn't want to because he was worried that if he had good results off stream that people would raise questions.
Kramnik was an ex World Champion, became unhinged and started indiscriminately accusing many GMs who beat him in short time controls of cheating, absurd claims made from his bedroom watching streams playing detective, where he accused #2 GM Hikaru that he had access to an evaluation bar which his editors added on his games he reviews before publishing them to YouTube [2]. In addition to torturing Danya with accusations for a year he also drove GM David Navara to depression [3] who he is currently trying to sue for defamation.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbk-mvBmLUM
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/1dtlvcb/kramnik_beli...
[3] https://www.chess.com/blog/FormerProdigy/because-we-care
They were fabulous, and I especially enjoyed his commentary. May he rest in peace.
I told him his name is Danya and he teaches people how to play a game.
</3
Danya's videos were amazing, and provided so much insight into this thought process and chess.
rest in peace.
He was so incredibly kind and an amazing teacher.
Apparently he did a stream where he looked pretty bad. It's too late to help Danya but if you ever see a friend in a bad place hopefully this reminds you to take action.
ChessBase coverage at https://en.chessbase.com/post/daniel-naroditsky-1995-2
He will be missed!
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rqPeGKVPbA&t=1834s
I would love to donate some to his family if anybody has a link to share.
One of the best live commentators, and among a generation of savvy chess influencers he seemed particularly sincere and without motivation beyond love of the game and communicating it's brilliance to others.
RIP GM Danya
Rip danya
A former chess world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, has turned into a sort of self satire seeking out cheaters in online chess. Basically everybody is cheating according to him, he even implied Hikaru Nakamura, the 2nd strongest player in the world, could be cheating.
Eventually his sights fell on Danya. At first I thought they were both kind of playing it up as a sort of a joke. For instance after the accusations Danya did a video where he had something absurd like a dozen different cameras watching him play from different angles. And in response Kramnik mentioned some petty absurdity that I can't even recall at this point - maybe there was a laptop on a chair or something? 'What is that computer Danya, suspicious, him?' And this sort of nonsense continued on for some time.
I still think Kramnik is doing it as a half-serious joke, but Danya clearly took it very seriously. He believed that his reputation had been ruined (even though just most people think Kramnik is the one who has mostly destroyed his own reputation and mostly just seen as a bit 'kooky' now a days) and Danya became a dramatically different person over about 2 years.
Previously he was kind of a happy go lucky blitz obsessed guy. But he gradually became increasingly morose and insecure. He also seemed to be losing weight, though I have no idea if that is accurate - I'm basing it solely on outside appearances which can be misleading. In any case, this was almost certainly related, and it makes the whole situation far darker.
https://www.youtube.com/@DanielNaroditskyGM/videos
https://www.twitch.tv/gmnaroditsky
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/12/crosswords/chess-columnis...
There's something oddly devastating about seeing people pass away in these online communities. I've never been one to really be affected by celebrities passing away, but I remember a few years when Geoff Robinson died (who was active in the Starcraft scene) that one hit me surprisingly badly as well.
Obviously it's banal in a sense because you always know people can die, but there's something very weird about seeing someone livestream one day and then you just get a headline like this on the next.
there’s an interesting (but not necessarily causual in either direction) link between chess and depression https://www.chess.com/blog/AstroTheoretical_Physics/chess-pl...
either how, RIP