Why did Vladimir Kramnik accuse Daniel Naroditsky of cheating in 2024? Controversy revisited amid the latter's death at 29

Vladimir Kramnik accused Daniel Naroditsky of cheating in order to gain unfair advantage over his opponents. The 50-year-old grandmaster accused Naroditsky of using a chess engine on another screen to get an upper hand over his opponents during an online chess tournament. Daniel Naroditsky denied the accusation at the time.

A year later, Daniel Naroditsky a.k.a. Danya passed away suddenly at the age of 29. His family broke the news of his passing but did not publicly reveal the cause of death. While grieving the young chessmaster's passing, netizens are also revisiting his cheating scandal with Vladimir Kramnik.

Vladimir posted some recent tweets regarding Daniel on his X account. The latest post is attached with a screenshot of a conversation between Kramnik and a chess fan. He captioned the post:

"What exactly happened? Because I received this two days ago from a friend of mine chess fan, and at least did what I could to warn people to do something urgently in my posts. To those who prefer blaming and shaming instead of helping. Awfull tradegy, hope properly investigated"

What did Daniel Naroditsky say after he was accused of cheating by Vladimir Kramnik?

A year ago, after Vladimir Kramnik accused Daniel Naroditsky for cheating in an online chess tournament, the former spoke to Take Take Take. He said:

"It's a reputation-ending crime to do it as a grandmaster. But to do what, you know, what Kramnik has done and what everybody who supports him have done, in my mind, morally, it makes you worse than dirt... It's definitely… I mean, I don’t think I'm good… You know, not good enough of a person, but thick-skinned enough to say, honestly, that that isn't affecting me at all. I would be, you know, failing the lie detector test if I said that."

He also expressed his thoughts about people in the chess world, saying:

"I've been nice and civil and courteous to this army of troglodyte lowlifes for way too long. I’m really sick of it. I’m not going to tolerate any of the hate any longer... Unfortunately, I think there’s a lot of two-facedness in the chess world. Sorry, I'm not too eloquent."

Daniel Naroditsky elaborated what he meant by the statement by saying:

"A lot of players are on the surface very supportive. But behind the scenes, I think, are kind of either fanning the flames or hold their own suspicions. I completely understand that online chess is a new sphere."

After strongly denying Vladimir Kramnik's cheating allegations and highlighting the hypocrisy in the chess world, Daniel Naroditsky expressed how deeply the accusations had affected him. A year later, the chess community was left shocked by his sudden death at the age of 29.

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