At 14, Daniel Naroditsky is no mere pawn
Steve Rubenstein, Special to The Chronicle
Monday, March 22, 2010
There’s a very nice teenager living in Foster City who likes to beat people’s brains out.
This he does across a chessboard, moving pieces in a way that few 14-year-old kids move them. The brutal dismemberment he administers to foes is the real deal. The absence of actual spilled blood seems a technicality.
“It’s not 64 squares,” said Daniel Naroditsky, who speaks softly but doesn’t play softly. “It’s a battlefield. There’s no luck, there’s no dice. It’s just you and your opponent.”
In the whacked-out history of the world’s greatest board game, there have always been prodigies – youngsters with the eerie gift to see instantly where the pieces ought to be going and what they can do when they get there, while ordinary mortals are merely shifting the wooden statuettes around. But hardly anyone has climbed so far, so fast and with such poise as Daniel. And no 14-year-old kid ever published a textbook about the game, as Daniel just did.
Here is the full article.
Good luck to the young lad.