Daniel (‘Danya’) Naroditsky was born on 9 November 1995 in San Mateo, California. He is the son of Jewish immigrants from the Soviet Union. His father, Vladimir, is a mathematician from Ukraine, and his mother, Lena, is a pianist from Azerbaijan. He learnt to play chess from his father at the age of six and quickly progressed, achieving success in school chess tournaments.
Daniel Naroditsky won the US School Chess Championships in both 2004 and 2005.
The following year, he won the US Team Championship with the San Francisco Mechanics in the United States Chess League.
In 2007, he became the U12 World Champion.
At the age of 14, in 2010, he became the youngest author in chess history when he published his first chess book, Mastering Positional Chess. This was followed in 2012 by Mastering Complex Endgames.
Between 2011 and 2013, he competed in the US Youth Championships, qualifying for the 2014 US Championships by winning in 2013.
After graduating from Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, California, he studied at Stanford University until 2019.
In 2013, he was named a Grandmaster by FIDE at the age of 18. In recognition of his achievements, he received the Samford Chess Scholarship in 2014. The following year, he was selected for the US national team for the World Team Championship, achieving an Elo performance rating of 2701 with 4 points from 7 rounds.
Following his successes in 2011 and 2014, Naroditsky qualified for the US Championships again in 2015, 2017 and 2021.
In classical chess, Naroditsky achieved his highest Elo rating (2647) in 2017, placing him among the top 200 players in the world. In blitz chess, Naroditsky exceeded the 2700 Elo mark for the first time in 2024. At the 2024 Blitz World Championship, he narrowly missed out on the knockout final round of the top eight, finishing ninth.
In August 2025, Naroditsky’s blitz Elo rating was 2732, making him one of the 20 best blitz players in the world. In the same month, he won the US Blitz Championships with 14/14.
Naroditsky was also an excellent online blitz and bullet player, at times leading the blitz rankings on Lichess and Chess.com.
Naroditsky was also active as an author and later as a streamer. In 2014, he took over an endgame column in Chess Life, which he ran until 2020. In 2022, he published a series of tactical problems in the New York Times. He was also a regular content creator on YouTube and Twitch, with a total of around 800,000 subscribers and followers. He demonstrated his deep understanding of chess as a witty and eloquent commentator at a number of chess tournaments.
Naroditsky had been living in Charlotte, North Carolina, since 2020 and was a grandmaster trainer at the Charlotte Chess Centre in his hometown.
On 20 October 2025, his family announced the death of Naroditsky. He would have turned 30 on 9 November.
