Daniel Naroditsky: How the Internet Killed a Chess Grandmaster
By: Deji Yesufu
Two days ago, it was reported that Daniel Naroditsky had died. Naroditsky was an American Chess Grandmaster. Chess and those who play the game are in a different world. There is a deep rivalry among players, and a constant appeal to climb the Elo rating. The Elo rating is a rating system that was developed to determine your level of playing performance. Your Elo increases as you win more and more games, and it drops as you lose more and more games. If an individual is rated 2600 and is beaten by someone who is 2100, he could lose as many as 50 Elo ratings. The fight to increase and maintain one’s Elo rating is actually a fight for life among chess players worldwide. There is a lot of suspicion that Daniel Naroditsky killed himself because he came under the burden of these Elo ratings, and because of the pressure that many people put on “performance” in one’s chess games. In recent times, Naroditsky came under attack from Vladimir Kramnik (former world champion from Russia), who claimed that Daniel had been cheating during online games (which were not true). From interviews that Daniel granted online, it was clear that those comments hurt him badly. It is possible that comments like those of Kramnik and other people online could have affected Daniel and possibly led him to take his life.
I no longer judge people who come under suicidal thoughts ever since I survived my own. In this life, we all depend on community. Some people find strength from family members – wife and children; others get theirs from church people; and others get theirs from internet support. But community is the essence of living. Having people constantly encouraging you and constructively criticizing your work because they want you to be better is a blessed thing. It becomes a curse when the same people you depend on for support turn out to be the people trying to pull you down. Such persons smile in your faces, but they do something else behind your back. My support system has been church people. One day, in March 2022, a leading church in this country, people whom I considered friends in ministry, stood on their pulpits and tore my ministry down. They practically used the announcement time during a Sunday morning worship to destroy everything I had been building. It was worse when I discovered that these “pastors” practically lied to make their point. That occasion was the second time I considered suicide in my life. The first time also had to do with church people. When I saw the pattern, I quickly changed my association with “believers” like those. And, yes, I am very suspicious of persons like them to date. My life is important to me.
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In fact, I entered into the wild world of chess because I was mentally trying to separate myself from these “church” people. I consider myself a super active person. And when my day is done, and I no longer have an article to write, a piece to edit, or some work to do, I look up recent happenings in the world of chess. That is where I found Daniel Naroditsky. Danya, as his friend called him, was different from the whole lot. He was genuinely kind, sensitive, gracious, and pedagogical. Daniel’s greatest strength was his ability to teach chess to viewers. He had a way of making people comfortable under the sound of his voice. Like every other thing in life, chess brings out the real you. If you are bullish, wicked, and domineering by nature, your chess will reveal it. If you are kind, loving, understanding, and concessional, your chess will reveal it. Daniel was the latter. One commentator online said that he was convinced that Vladimir Kramnik went after Danya because he knew his sensitivity. It is not likely that it is Kramnik’s comments that led Daniel to take his life. It is, however, clear that Daniel had reached his tipping point, and one comment online might have just led him to end it all.
Let me end by making this point: the internet is full of spirits. Most people are not what they are online in real life. The internet, even when people appear with their real names, still offers anonymity that gives people the liberty to say things that they would naturally not say in real life. The spirit that possesses a lot of people online is a demonic spirit. And I include myself in this. We all tend to be something else online, other than what we would be in real life. In the process, we say things to people that can damage them. One missionary was in a faraway country in Africa when I left a comment on his timeline. He reported that comment to a mutual friend, and while I thought it was an innocuous comment, it became clear to me that it was damaging to him, impeding a great work he was doing for God in a faraway village in a distant nation. Since then, I have tried to curb my comments online. If I know someone, and I strongly disagree with a point of view they express online, I wait till I see them in person, and then I share it with them. Some other time, I use the inbox. But I am more and more careful with my comments now.
TextandPublishing.com is in the middle of a series on Obafemi Awolowo, a foremost Nigerian nationalist and politician. Awolowo was a public commentator in his early years in the 1930s. He wrote an article once where he criticized the building of a public library in Ibadan. The white men decided to close down that library because of what he wrote in that article. When Awolowo began to suffer political persecution at the hands of those in power in the early 1960s, he turned his attention to the public. Rather than making his case at the court, he made his case to the public. Awolowo’s comments influenced the young men who overthrew the First Republic in Nigeria. When Obafemi Awolowo realized that his words could make or mar Nigeria, he became more circumspect with the things he said in public. Words carry power.
I did not know Daniel Naroditsky, but I watched him enough online to know him to some extent. He was the best of the lot, and it is sad that it appears that it is the best of us that leave this world first. Danya was only 29 years old. I pray that God will comfort his family and strengthen his mother at this time. He was never married. Daniel would be greatly missed in the world of chess.
Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at [email protected]
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