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Grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky died at the age of 29 after an apparently weird stream (https://youtube.com/watch?v=mzo3JHvg-iw). There has even been a Tyler Cowen 'Straussian post' that may been in reference to his passing where Tyler references negative social contagion (https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/10/why-live-how-suicide-becomes-an-epidemic.html). This follows an ongoing controversy where former world champion Vladimir Kramnik has either inferred or accused Naroditsky of cheating in online chess. There is no doubt that Naroditsky is a very strong chess player. He has strong over the board results where it would be difficult to cheat and also recently beat Anna Cramling blindfolded in a bullet match where he gave her time odds. (https://youtube.com/watch?v=rmLDo3SKUo8). Anna Cramling is not a top player but she is still very strong and I think this is vivid proof for non-chess people that Daniel is a strong chess player.
Kramnik has been inferring or accusing people of cheating based on their online performances in chess.com titled Tuesday events where there are cash prizes or their other games on chess.com where they have made large win streaks. In chess there is a big problem with online cheating because for strong players access to a computer evaluation of the position after their opponent had made a move would be a large advantage according to Magnus Carlson (https://youtube.com/watch?v=VcbHmHHwlUQ&t=345) and it would be very difficult for an anti-cheat system to detect this. Maybe it would be possible to correlate move time with change in evaluation to try and detect such a cheat but I suspect it would be a very noisy signal. But strong players have chosen more greedy approaches to cheating where they will play moves supplied directly from a computer engine and chess.com have some statistical methods where they are able to detect this cheating and have banned FIDE titled players for this.
There has been an outpouring of support for Daniel because he is well liked in the chess community because of the education content he puts out on youtube and his wholesome persona. Also, people feel that Kramnik's allegations against him and other people in chess have been unfounded. This includes allegations against GM David Navara (https://lichess.org/@/RealDavidNavara/blog/because-we-care/fauAwr9r) who claimed in a blog post he had suicidal thoughts due to Kramniks attacks.
Kramnik's allegations against Naroditsky also included a 'speed run' match where Naroditsky played weaker opponents on chess.com to produce educational content. In this episode Naroditsky opened a computer engine to start evaluating the game before it had ended while his opponent was stalling (https://youtube.com/watch?v=mzo3JHvg-iw). Daniel left this comment in the video explaining the situation:
Chess.com where these games were played has made some effort to legitimise speedrun accounts. Normally, such a thing would be considered a fair play violation due to smurfing but chess.com has an official way to register a speedrun account and anyone who is queued against a speedrun account would have their rating points refunded. Potentially, chess.com could have gone further and made queuing into speedrun accounts an opt-out preference and made it clearer what fairplay rules speedrun accounts could violate. For example, I'm currently enjoying a series on the sicilian dragon from a GM but when the opponent makes a mistake the GM will ask the live stream audience what is the move to take advantage of the mistake. This makes a lot of sense from a teaching point of view but is a technical violation of the chess.com fairplay rules that bars outside assistance.
Kramnik is now claiming he has contacted the Charlotte police department with new information about Daniels death (https://x.com/VBkramnik/status/1981257207917187291)
I'm not sure what information Kramnik has shared but there seems to be a conspiracy pushed by Kramnik aligned people that there is some kind of 'chess mafia'. I assume this is based around chess.com, the Charolette chess center and a bunch of popular streamers that work with chess.com. Previously, there was a character called 'ChessBae' that was able to use money and chess.com connections in order to exert influence on chess streamers (https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/oios3j/chess_the_rise_and_fall_of_chessbae_the/) so it is not completely far fetched. However, Kramnik has a history of coming up short when it comes to his accusations so based on past performance Naroditsky death will probably turn out to be unsuspicious.
Knowing nothing about chess and nothing about the characters involved, I'm going to say that if this guy killed himself because of cheating accusations then he was probably cheating. Of course, reading this post I'm not actually sure if the cheating accusations had anything to do with his death.
This is part of the tragedy of the situation. It's easy to have such an impression, but knowing at least some of the details, it just seems like lives were needlessly ruined.
The problem with Kramnik's cheating allegations is that they are based entirely on his own subjective evaluation, and Danya is not the only one he has accused. His knowledge of statistics is farcically bad. His internal evaluation seems to be: at my peak was I better than them at classical, if yes then I should be destroying them in online blitz. The problem is that even though classical and online blitz are highly correlated, they do not have a correlation of 1. Blitz and classical are slightly different skill sets, and this is magnified online vs OTB. Imagine your boomer uncle trying to navigate a web-app with his worn out 20 year old Circuit City mouse and complaining the app is broken every time he miss-clicks. That's what it's like watching Kramnik playing online. For example, chess.com allows you to pre-move to minimize the time spent on your turn. Kramnik for some reason refuses to use this feature, then also complains that his opponents are moving with super-human speed. No your opponents are not cheating, you just don't understand how the platform works. Unfortunately, his accusations no matter how baseless come from the voice of a former World Champion. He could have been known as a great champion that helped train the next generation, instead he just looks like an angry old man who can't accept that he has declined and can't keep up anymore.
On the Danya side, the various rumors make it seem like an overdose was more likely than suicide. Either way, I don't think the incentives necessarily indicate cheating. While very good Danya didn't really make his living playing chess he made his living as a chess influencer. In particular, an influencer known for his wholesomeness. As that type of influencer your profession and self-identity revolve around how your are perceived. It seem from his last stream that despite the fact that many of the top chess names privately supported his innocence, and his fans remained loyal, the trolls were weighing heavily on him.
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Professional chess and the people who follow it is a pretty small world. Being publicly accused like this and having your reputation continuously dragged through the mud with no real way to outright refute the claims (it's impossible to prove that you didn't cheat) is absolutely something that could destroy someone emotionally.
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The accuser is a legendary player—one of Daniel’s childhood heroes. I can see how being villainized by someone you’ve spent your whole life trying to impress could lead someone into a downward spiral.
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Also it's not like cheating's some absolute thing.
Dude could be an incredible chess player + also cheated to win one of the cash pool tournaments on top of that one time.
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