Danya

My favorite chess commentator died today.

Daniel Naroditsky (it's ok if you didn't swipe up on his profile)

He was rated 2600s (excellent) and recently made it to #20 in the world in Blitz (5 minutes)

His commentary—in major tournaments like Candidates 2024—was scorpionic chill with easy to understand for beginners even though hes 2600s. I was looking forward to more of him as a discovered gem in commentating.

I don't know how he died, but he's a Scorpio so you know, 8th house stuff

So young, too! Such shame!

As many of you probably heard, Kramnik had made a sustained attack against Danya, accusing him of cheating

Kramnik is slime, don't get me wrong, and he accuses everyone of cheating, proverbally, and its more or less established he cheated his way through the world championship title (see Toiletgate, when a Taurus exposed Kramnik visiting the toilet A LOT during thr world championship)

Danya was referencing chess books during his livestreams, which according to chess.com is in fact cheating.

Chess.com might have altered the rules because Danya posted the videos on YouTube as instructional material, but I doubt they changed it for him.

I don't think Danya cheated over-the-board or anything (cough Kram) but yeah.

So the accusations stuck and Danya vehemently denied them.

His recent streams were tough to watch, but I had no idea how bad it was

He easily could have apologized for referencing books, taken his lashes, and it would have been over with, imo.

But Danya was a kid when Toiletgate happened, there's a photo of him as a kid with Kramnik sure, ...and the current chess fan base has 0 tolerance for cheating

I even reduced watching Danya's content myself.

Danya even brought out a book recently on livestream, concious of what he was doing imo

This is why I apologized for August 6, is all i am saying