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American chess grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky, 29, passed away unexpectedly, his family announced on Monday in a statement from his Charlotte Chess Center.

The family expressed their shock at the untimely passing of Daniel Naroditsky.

Daniel was a devoted member of the chess community and a gifted chess player, commentator, and educator.

Not immediately known what caused the death.

At the age of 18, Naroditsky achieved the highest ranking in chess, the other highest position in the game, surpassing World Chess Champion.

The California-born player won the Under 12 world championship in the early 1990s and spent his teenage years drafting chess strategies books as he rose up the global rankings.

He consistently placed in the top 200 in the world for traditional chess, and he also excelled in blitz chess, a fast-paced game that lasted his entire adult career.

Most recently, Naroditsky, also known as Danya, won the August edition of the American National Blitz Championship. In the previous year’s blitz world championship, he also placed ninth.

Daniel’s unexpected passing has sad news to the Naroditsky family. Daniel was a gifted chess player, a respected educator, and a devoted supporter of the game. As the grieving family gets worse, we ask for privacy. pic. twitter.com/otNdUxDKtL

Naroditsky, one of his fellow grandmasters, livestreamed many of his matches and shared live commentary on others, giving the sport the credit of opening it up to a wider audience. Naroditsky’s play was frequently streamed on Twitch and the interactive streaming platform Twitch.

He adored watching educational videos and trying to be. American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura stated on a live stream on Monday that the chess world is “very grateful.”

You Thought I Was Gone!, his final video was posted to his YouTube channel on Friday. After taking a break from streaming, Narditsky declared to his audience that he was “back, better than ever.” As he played chess matches live on a computer from his home studio, he explained his moves.

Other world-class chess players took to social media to express their shock and sadness.

Viswanathan Anand, the five-time World Chess Champion and grandmaster of Indian chess, described Naroditsky as “an excellent chess commentator and educator” and “a genuinely nice person.”

Benjamin Bok, the Dutch grandmaster of chess, described his lifelong bond with Naroditsky as he said he has known him since Naroditsky won the Under-12 world championship in 2007.

On X, Bok said, “I still can’t believe it and don’t want to believe it.” “It was always a privilege to play, train, and commentate with Danya, but most of all, I referred to him as my friend.”

Naroditsky was the child of Ukrainian and Azerbaijani Jews who immigrated to the US. His parents described him as a very serious child with an impressive attention span and memory, and he was born and raised in San Mateo County, California.

After taking a year off from chess tournaments, he transferred to Stanford University to study history. In 2019, he received a bachelor’s degree.

The university stated in a statement released on Monday that it had chosen not to adhere to the principles of “academic freedom, merit-based research funding, and institutional independence.”

The University claimed that some of the recommendations merited “thoughtful consideration,” but that “many of the proposed ideas are already in place at the University of Arizona.”

Out of the nine elite institutions that the Trump administration initially approached, Tucson, Arizona-based University is the seventh to decline the compact.

Two of the universities, Vanderbilt University and the University of Texas at Austin, haven’t made a public announcement as a result of the White House’s decision to make a decision on Monday. The university was reportedly engaging in dialogue with the Trump administration, but it had not been given any authority to reject or accept the agreement, according to Vanderbilt University Chancellor Daniel Diermeier in a statement.

Brown University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Southern California, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, and Dartmouth College are the other six universities that have already indicated they will not be signing the compact.

Universities agreed to treat race and sex when admitting students or hiring faculty, and committed to keeping international students at no more than 15% of undergraduate enrollment, among other things.

Universities who sign on would also need to ensure that they maintain a “vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus” with no dominant political ideology, and abolish departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) are concerned about the compact.

The Trump administration’s offer to pay favors to colleges and universities that support the government “smells of favoritism, patronage, and bribery in exchange for allegiance to a partisan ideological agenda,” the AFT said in a statement.

The White House has significantly reduced federal research funding since Trump’s second term began in January 2025, sometimes citing a desire to curtail political expression on university campuses, including pro-Palestinian protests and diversity initiatives.

Some universities, like the University of Columbia, have chosen to collaborate with the Trump administration, while others, like Harvard University, have made a resolute opposition.

A federal judge ruled in September that the Trump administration had violated the law by denying Harvard research grants worth more than $2.2 billion.

District Judge Allison Burroughs argued in her ruling that the Trump administration “used anti-Semitism as a pretext for a blatant, ideological assault on this country’s top universities.”

Trump has targeted Columbia and other schools because of their prominent roles in the antiwar demonstrations that broke out after Israel declared its occupation of Gaza in October 2023, which resulted in at least 68 and 216 deaths.