I first heard of chess legend Daniel Naroditsky, known to his friends and admirers as “Danya,” during the great pandemic chess boom. Like hundreds of thousands of people around the world, the combination of lockdown and the Netflix show The Queen’s Gambit awakened in me an obsession with the beautiful, thousand-year-old game. And it wasn’t long before I stumbled across Danya’s Twitch stream, where he would play hard-fought matches against the best players in the world, and then seamlessly pivot to making high-quality instructional content for novices like me. This is what I find myself remembering, two days after Danya’s family announced his tragic, unexpected death at the age of 29.
Chess experienced a kind of gold rush in those years. A whole slew of chess influencers emerged from this boom with newfound popularity, and Danya was one of them. But what set Danya apart was his total integrity. While many personalities relied on clickbait, thirst traps, or edgelording to get eyeballs, Danya was there simply to share his chess wisdom with the masses—gimmick-free.
