The world of chess is still coming to terms with the death of Daniel Naroditsky, despite a week having passed since the American grandmaster’s untimely demise at the age of 29. Having initially spoken about the criticism that Naroditsky was getting rom former world champion Vladimir Kramnik last week, world no 1 Carlsen has now spoken about what made Naroditsky special.
“What was really interesting for me about playing Naroditsky was that he had a style that’s very different from mine. So I generally do well in faster formats unless I somehow get mated. I can play very good positional moves quickly. And that’s what was interesting about him was that he was able to drum up attacks out of nothing. And he would quite often actually checkmate me. Like that’s often how he won games (against me). And so for me that clash of style was was was extremely interesting,” Carlsen said in an interview with ChessBase India in St Louis ahead of the Clutch Chess event where he will be playing against world champion Gukesh Dommaraju, World No 2 Hikaru Nakamura and World No 3 Fabiano Caruana.
Last week, speaking about Naroditsky after his death, Carlsen had said: “It’s a great loss. It’s very sad for all of us that somebody who was such a resource to the chess community and also had a universally high approval rating from everybody he met was led to the place that he was.”
Carlsen had also slammed Kramnik, who had tried to insinuate many times that Naroditsky was not playing by fair means in online chess events without offering conclusive evidence. Carlsen has himself accused Hans Niemann of cheating in 2022, which later led to a $100 million lawsuit and an out-of-court settlement after Carlsen could not prove the allegations.
“With the whole Kramnik situation not only with Naroditsky, from the beginning I would say. Obviously I have had problems with him in the past, not like big problems but generally, for all his greatness, generally, he thought that he was somebody who had a bit of a better reputation than that he deserved for many reasons. But I did feel from the very start that he when he was going through some kind of ‘crusade’ against cheating online, I did feel that, at the start, I didn’t agree with his numbers. I thought at the end of the day he is kind of fighting the good fight,” Carlsen had said during a live stream for “Take Take Take” last Tuesday.
“But it turned on its head. First of all, he started to go after Hikaru (Nakamura) which seemed crazy. That was bad in itself but when he started going after Naroditsky so hard- first of all, I don’t think anybody thought Naroditsky was cheating. I know that coming from me, make of it what you will. Some people will say I have very little credibility on the matter but I personally in private expressed that I was sorry for what he was going through and supported him. Probably should have done that publicly as well but I think people can understand some of the reasons I was reluctant to. I thought, yeah, the way he was going after Naroditsky was horrible. Seeing how it affected him as well which was apparent now. I don’t have any more information. I don’t know what happened 2 days ago so I am not going to speculate on that. But regardless, even long before that it had clearly taken him to a point where he was not in a great space. So, again, make of what you will, coming from me but that was not good,” the World No 1 from Norway added.
