Daniel's books
Dear chess friends,
We have received many requests to reprint the books written by the late Daniel Naroditsky for New In Chess. We would love to do that, and we are talking to people close to Daniel to see how we can publish updated editions as soon as possible.
Daniel wrote Mastering Positional Chess when he was just fourteen, and its sequel, Mastering Complex Endgames, only two years later. New In Chess was very proud to publish these two wonderful, highly readable chess improvement manuals. As Daniel wrote in his foreword, 'The purpose of reading a chess book is not only to learn from it, but to enjoy it as well!'
However, Daniel himself preferred to write a new book and wanted to postpone reprinting the books from his youth until he had finished his new project, which unfortunately never materialised.
Please be patient with us. If we can reprint the books, we would like to do so with a beautiful new design and after checking the chess moves with a modern engine. We might want to include some extra content as well. This will take time, but we promise it will be worth the wait!
Remmelt Otten, Publisher, New In Chess
For now, we would like to offer you the foreword written by his parents in Mastering Positional Chess, which explains the origins of the book:
Daniel (born on 9 November 1995) started playing chess when he was six and a half years old (Summer 2002). His dad taught him how to play chess, so he would have something to do in his free time. Daniel played with his four-and-a-half year older brother Alan all summer, and after a few months Daniel had a natural ability to place pieces on the board – something which usually comes with many years of experience. Indeed, love for the great game runs in the family – Daniel’s grandfather played chess quite well, and collected chess books; Daniel’s Dad, Vladimir, played chess competitively in his youth, and Daniel’s brother Alan has been a Top 100 player in the United States in his age category for many years. Alan and Daniel have traveled together to numerous chess competitions and discussed their games with each other for endless hours. There is also a large library of chess books at home – collected over three generations now – both in English and in Russian.
A few months after he learned the rules of the game, Daniel played in his first tournament (2003 Scholastic Championship of California), and won all five games easily. This tournament served as the trigger, and after it Daniel became very serious about chess. His love for the game became more apparent every day, and he would spend many hours at the board just moving the pieces (we purchased several chess sets, and for Daniel, they replaced model train sets or Lego blocks). We hired a professional chess coach, and Daniel started to take weekly lessons. We did not have to wait long to fill up our bookcases with his trophies. Very soon, it became clear to us that we needed a more seasoned coach to accommodate Daniel’s rapid rate of improvement. Armenian-born IM Armen Ambartsoumian became that coach.
A few years later, when he was about 10 years old, Daniel was playing first board in an adult tournament. At that time, he was still relatively unknown on the United States chess scene. We walked him to the playing hall and directed him to his board. A few minutes later, he came back crying, telling us that the Tournament Director would not allow him to sit down – Daniel was told that he was in the wrong section, and kids were playing elsewhere. He looked very young even for his years, but his inner maturity exhibited itself during one of the master classes conducted by Garry Kasparov in New York (bi-annual sessions to which the best young players are invited). Kasparov could not help laughing when he asked Daniel about his opening repertoire, and Daniel began with “When I was young, I played…” Everybody who knows Daniel agrees that his intellectual development is far beyond his years.
After numerous successes and failures, Daniel’s then coach GM Gregory Kaidanov told him that if he wanted to become serious about his chess (his rating at that time was about 2000), he needed to study positional play. As is the case with most young chess players, Daniel was much more attracted to combinations and sacrifices rather than careful maneuvering. Nevertheless, he started to read books on positional play in English and in Russian, but was not easily satisfied, and his coach suggested that Daniel should analyze his own games, and make annotations. Daniel would spend hours filling notebooks with small, calligraphic characters and diagrams he printed from ChessBase.
Since he was about four years old, Daniel enjoyed writing and kept countless notebooks of his thoughts and short stories. Daniel loved writing in his notebooks much more than just typing on the computer. Writing is inevitably slower, and allows you to comprehend the material much better. It has always been aesthetically pleasing for Daniel.
In the summer of 2008, Daniel started to ask us strange questions about the book publishing business, and one of the last pages of his notebook contained an autobiographical section. Daniel always had curiosity for many unusual subjects: capitals of small countries, birth and death dates of famous composers, and numbers of hospital beds per capita in third world countries, just to name a few. We treated his questions about book printing as one of these curiosities (we knew he was writing a book, but never thought that a 12-year-old could create publishable material). However, a year and several notebooks later, he showed us the finished product, and we decided to ask for the opinions of his coaches. After receiving positive reactions from GM Gregory Kaidanov and GM Lev Psakhis, chess historian and popular author IM John Donaldson recommended that we send one chapter to a few publishers. After choosing, editing, and sending the largest chapter, we received an email from the publisher of New In Chess, Mr. Allard Hoogland. He loved the excerpt, and expressed his surprise that a high quality work was written by such a young author. After we sent the entire manuscript, the book was accepted for publishing. That is how this book came into being.
The process of writing this book definitely helped Daniel to achieve three California scholastic championship titles, two national championship titles, and finally, in November of 2007, the title of World Youth Chess Champion. Most importantly, we hope that becoming an author and completing this book will inspire Daniel to achieve any goals he sets for himself.
Vladimir Naroditsky and Lena Schuman
Daniel’s Parents