An American chess superstar who died at age 29 was engaged in a bitter feud with a rival player who accused him of cheating.
And one of Daniel Naroditsky’s final opponents now claims the rival is responsible for his death.
Naroditsky’s unexpected passing in Charlotte, NC, was announced in a statement Monday by his club, the Charlotte Chess Center.
No cause of death was given for the chess prodigy, who became a Grandmaster aged just 18.
Over the past year, Naroditsky had faced vicious accusations of cheating by former world champion Vladimir Kramnik.
Kramnik, 50, insinuated that his US rival was using footage of Naroditsky’s online games to claim that he was looking at a second screen on which he had a sophisticated computer program that could calculate millions of chess moves a second.
Naroditsky always strenuously denied that he had cheated, and had faced no accusations of misconduct from any other high ranking players.
Kramnik later deleted his account on the website chess.com after launching a GoFundMe to crowdfund his unspecified goal of “trying to clean modern chess from cheating.”
In a since-deleted final stream shared on Twitch, Naroditsky fell asleep repeatedly while playing, discussed the impact of Kramnik’s accusations, and appeared deeply distressed, El País reported.
Kramnik wrote, “Don’t do drugs,” in a cryptic post following the announcement of Naroditsky’s death, before referencing a “strange recent stream” from the American star.
His seemingly callous response sparked fury in the chess world.
“He [Kramnik] has kind of literally taken a life,” Indian chess Grandmaster Nihal Sarin told the Indian Express.
Sarin, who was the last player to face Naroditsky online before his death, said the American appeared troubled during their final game.
“He said he was under immense stress due to a lot of baseless accusations — headed by Kramnik, of course. Apparently, unfortunately, quite a few others also seem to have joined in,” Sarin said.
Russian chess ace Kramnik, who lives in Switzerland, did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
“We cannot comment or speculate as this is an active investigation,” a spokesperson for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department told The Post.
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