Daniel Naroditsky isn’t searching for Bobby Fischer, but if he keeps on winning chess tournaments, Fischer just might search for him.
By all appearances, Naroditsky is a typical South Bay 10-year-old, but in one respect he stands out: Naroditsky is a chess master who routinely beats players two, three, four and five times his age. His parents fully support their son’s passion for the game, which is why on any given weekend Naroditsky may find himself in Houston or Denver or Paris, locked in battle.
His parents, Vladimir and Lena Naroditsky, are Jews from the former Soviet Union — he a financial adviser and math professor, she a piano teacher at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. That makes for a pretty good bloodline if you want a chess champ, but even his parents are amazed at their son’s ability.
“He’s a very serious kid,” says Vladimir. “He can concentrate a very long time, he doesn’t get distracted, even for six-hour games. It’s the structure of his mind. He thinks very deeply, plus he has an amazing memory.”
Naroditsky is a fourth-grader at the Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School in Foster City. He enjoys math, English and Jewish studies classes there, and because of his chess career, the school allows him to take most Wednesdays off to study the game with grand masters.
“You have to study, because if you skip a week it’s not OK,” says Naroditsky (called Danya by friends and family). “I sit at a board, read books and solve [chess] problems on the computer. You have to get ready for a tournament, practice every day, and you have to play.”
That extra day of training gives him an edge. Last year at the supernationals in Nashville, Tenn., he became U.S. champion for third-graders, and this past December he placed first for fourth-graders.
Having a chess champ for a son involves much more than polishing trophies on the mantle. Vladimir and Lena have to put in plenty of shlep time to support their son’s chess career.
“We’re like gymnastics or figure-skating parents,” says Lena. “I spend hours at the tournaments watching people play.”
Danya’s father, too, was an avid chess player as a youth, later passing his love of chess on to his son. But Danya takes after his mother as well, being a talented pianist and music lover, especially of baroque, Renaissance and medieval music.
“I asked my mom for a book of composer biographies,” recalls Danya. The music sounds more interesting to me now, knowing how these people lived so long ago.”
The Naroditsky family story could serve as the template for immigrant success in America. Vladimir and his family came here from Ukraine in 1979, Lena from Azerbaijan in 1981. He earned a doctorate in math from the University of Colorado, while she was an accomplished classical pianist. The two have two children, Danya and his older brother Alan, who is a pianist and student at Hillsborough’s Crystal Springs School (and no slouch at chess either).
Vladimir says he and his wife never have to push their son to work on his chess game. “He does this of his own volition,” he says of Danya. “Once we came back from a grueling three-day competition. He had dinner and a half hour later he was back on the chessboard. He’s an absolutely normal kid, except in chess.”
One of the young champ’s biggest fans is Wornick’s head of school Mervyn Danker, who has worked with the family to accommodate Danya’s chess training.
Danya says his goal is to be grand master by age 14 and later have a career as a scientist. In the meantime, he left this week for an invitation-only master class in Lexington, Ky., with four of the country’s other top young players. And of course he will continue playing — and probably winning — tournaments and pick-up games against adults. Just like one not too long ago.
“I played a rabbi,” remembers Danya of a chess club game he recently played in Berkeley. “He lost right away and instead of losing normally he threw all the pieces in the air and stormed out. I almost laughed.”