Daniel Naroditsky’s Death Deepens Rift Between Traditional and Online Chess

Months after the death of Daniel Naroditsky, the chess world remains divided between the game’s traditional establishment and a new generation of online stars, a split laid bare by public disputes and differing visions for the sport. The rise of streaming figures such as Anna Cramling, who has more than 1.6 million YouTube subscribers, and others helped fuel chess’s pandemic-era surge alongside hits like Netflix’s "The Queen’s Gambit," drawing millions to online content.

Naroditsky bridged those worlds himself, writing a New York Times chess column in 2022 and building large followings on Twitch (about 340,000) and YouTube (about 515,000) before he died on Oct. 19 at age 29; he had worked at the Charlotte Chess Center, which is now fundraising for a memorial championship and scholarships in his honor.

The dispute grew public last fall when Vladimir Kramnik, a former world champion, accused Naroditsky of cheating, a charge that Peter Giannatos of the Charlotte Chess Center said was "eating him alive." Initial investigations treated Naroditsky’s death as a suicide or accidental overdose; a toxicology report from the North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner released this week found methamphetamine, amphetamine, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine in his system.

FIDE has filed an ethics complaint accusing Kramnik of a pattern of harassment, and Kramnik said he filed a defamation lawsuit against FIDE in civil court in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Key Topics

Culture, Daniel Naroditsky, Vladimir Kramnik, Anna Cramling, Charlotte Chess Center, Fide