FIDE to investigate Kramnik over attacks on Naroditsky as chess reels from death

The International Chess Federation (Fide) said on Wednesday it is examining former world champion Vladimir Kramnik’s public attacks on Daniel Naroditsky, the American grandmaster whose sudden death at 29 has stunned the chess world and laid bare fissures in the sport’s digital age.

Naroditsky, among the most visible faces of chess’s pandemic-era renaissance, was one of the most popular players and teachers of his generation, a Stanford-educated prodigy who won the Under-12 world championship, became a grandmaster at 18 and went on to amass more than 800,000 followers across Twitch and YouTube. Known by his nickname Danya, the California-born Naroditsky’s mix of patience, humor, generosity and gift for communication made him a standard-bearer of chess’s online boom, helping to bring vast new audiences to a centuries-old pastime.

In recent years, the explosion of online chess has fueled a parallel surge in cheating accusations, as players gained access to powerful computer engines capable of suggesting perfect moves in real time. The ecosystem became both democratized and combustible. “The rate of cheating online is 100 to 200 times higher than over the board,” said Kenneth Regan, an international master and computer scientist who helps detect cheating for Fide as a member of the organization’s Fair Play Commission. “From my point of view, there are five to 10 cases per year over the board.”

Into this volatile atmosphere stepped Kramnik, the cerebral Russian who held the world championship for nearly seven years after dethroning Garry Kasparov in 2000 and who is widely considered one of the greatest defensive players in history. Over the past year he had accused Naroditsky, without evidence, of using a chess engine during online games. Naroditsky denied the charge but acknowledged the toll it had taken on his mental wellbeing. “Ever since the Kramnik stuff, I feel like if I start doing well, people assume the worst of intentions,” he said during his final Twitch livestream last weekend. “The issue is just the lingering effect of it.”

On Monday, the Charlotte Chess Center, where Naroditsky served as head coach and grandmaster-in-residence since 2020, announced his “unexpected” death. No cause was given, though Ukrainian grandmaster Oleksandr Bortnyk, a close friend of Naroditsky, said that he and another friend discovered the 29-year-old unresponsive at home. Tributes have poured in from across the chess world. “He could explain the game to an ant,” said fellow streamer and international master Levy Rozman, better known as GothamChess. “He existed at the perfect crossroads of playing brilliantly and explaining brilliantly.”

As grief spread, anger quickly followed. The world No 2 Hikaru Nakamura delivered an expletive-laden condemnation of Kramnik on his stream, while five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen decried the Russian’s “horrible” conduct. The Indian grandmaster Nihal Sarin, who played Naroditsky in his final online match, accused Kramnik of “taking a life” in remarks to the Indian Express, adding that a relentless campaign of accusations had left his friend “under immense stress”.

The 50-year-old Kramnik, who has made similar accusations against other players in recent years, including Sarin, continued posting even after news of Naroditsky’s death, calling it a tragedy that “police should investigate”, speculating about “financial interests”, and threatening legal action against “those falsely blaming me”. His remarks drew fresh outrage, intensifying calls for Fide to intervene.

Sarin, 21, described Kramnik as “a great player, a world champion” who “gave a lot to chess”, but objected to his vigilante, scattershot crusade against suspected cheaters: “Cheating in chess is a huge problem. But what Kramnik does is completely unacceptable. He just blurts out accusations every day. … He was a world champion, a very influential figure after all. And I don’t know if he realizes the impact it can have on innocent people. Kramnik’s methods, it seems like, you burn down a city to catch some cheaters, basically. You kill some thousand other completely innocent guys to get one or two guys.”

Fide’s chief executive, Emil Sutovsky, told Reuters the organization was “looking into” Kramnik’s conduct, noting that “the way Kramnik approaches it simply can’t be accepted”, referring to the repeated public accusations. The federation said it plans to honor Naroditsky with a special award and that its president, Arkady Dvorkovich, would establish a prize in his name.

But Sutovsky’s own attempt at reflection soon plunged the governing body into deeper controversy. In a lengthy post on X, he wrote that while Kramnik’s behavior was “appalling and outright shameful”, he also questioned whether Naroditsky’s friends had done enough to help him in recent months. “Amount of love given to Danya post-mortem is unprecedented,” he wrote. “But here is the problem – where all of you were when Danya was alive and unwell?” He went on to say that “virtue signalling and like-grabbing is the worst way to pay respect to Danya,” adding that Naroditsky “was kind to many, but it feels like most of the time he was lonely”.

Daniel Naroditsky playing chess at the computer. Photograph: Kelly Centrelli/AP

The post ignited immediate backlash. Chess streamer and woman grandmaster Nemo Zhou called it “one of the most disgusting and vile things I have ever read”. In a reply on X, she accused Sutovsky of “blaming the public when you have absolutely no idea who Danya had been in contact with”, and of failing to protect players from harassment. “Where the f*ck were you?” she wrote. “Certainly not protecting your players from abuse … You are clearly unfit to lead Fide. Resign immediately.”

The popular Swedish steamer Anna Cramling, who described Kramnik’s attacks as “cyber-bullying”, also criticized Sutovsky’s post, calling on Fide to “do everything in your power to make sure justice is served”.

Other figures said the Fide CEO’s remarks betrayed a blindness to the larger cultural problem: the climate of suspicion, hostility and parasocial scrutiny that now pervades online chess. Many pointed to 2023, when the popular online platform Chess.com shut down Kramnik’s blog after warning of his “escalating attacks” on dozens of players, calling his allegations “baseless and damaging”.

Naroditsky’s family said they hope he is remembered not for the toxicity he endured but for “the joy and inspiration he brought people every day”. Carlsen described him as “a resource to the chess community”, while Nakamura called him “the best of us”.

In a response to Reuters on Wednesday, Kramnik said: “I’d rather tell the story in whole, no wish commenting on Emil Sutovsky statement, but will comment on Fide president [Dvorkovich’s] statement, if it will appear.”

Kramnik and Sutovsky did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Guardian.

As the federation faces pressure to act, Fide’s own credibility has been called into question: not only for how it handles Kramnik, but for whether it can reckon with the darker consequences of the very online revolution Naroditsky helped marshal. The digital era made chess faster, louder and more visible than ever. It’s also made it crueler.

“Daniel’s smile faded after the attacks began,” Sarin said. “We all saw it. The chess world has lost one of its brightest lights – someone who made our game accessible to millions.”