Carl Ja­cobs

THERE are chess prodi­gies and then there are chess prodi­gies. Take the case of Daniel Nar­o­dit­sky for ex­am­ple. The 22-year-old Amer­i­can grand­mas­ter has not on­ly ex­celled over the chess board, he is al­so the youngest pub­lished chess au­thor in his­to­ry, hav­ing his first book pub­lished at the age of 14.

By com­par­i­son, the geat achieve­ments of young Mor­phy, Ca­pa­blan­ca, Fis­ch­er and Re­shevsky were large­ly con­fined to the chess­board. Nar­o­dit­sky's con­tri­bu­tion, how­ev­er, en­hances the mind game in oth­er sig­nif­i­cant ways.

Af­ter he learned to play the game from his fa­ther at the age of six, Nar­o­dit­sky steeped him­self in the art of chess, be­com­ing the youngest play­er to win the North­ern Cal­i­for­nia K-12 cham­pi­onship. Lat­er in 2007, his ca­reer took flight as he topped the Un­der-12 di­vi­sion of the World Youth Cham­pi­onship scor­ing 9.5 out of 11 points.

The fol­low­ing May, he added the North Cal­i­for­nia 9-12 cham­pi­onship to his grow­ing bag of vic­to­ries.

At the 2010 US Open, Nar­o­dit­sky en­tered the big league, scor­ing sev­en and a half points to share sec­ond to fifth places be­hind GM Alexan­der Sha­balov and Varuzhan Ako­bian. In Ju­ly 2011, he earned his first Grand­mas­ter norm fol­lowed by his sec­ond at the 2013 Philadel­phia Open where he tied for first place with GM Fi­del Jimenez. In the now pop­u­lar Mil­lion­aire Chess Open held in Las Ve­gas the fol­low­ing year, Nar­o­dit­sky played un­beat­en, tied for 1st-5th with Timur Ga­reev, David Berczes, Sergei Azarov and Sam Shank­land.

A few months lat­er, the young GM was award­ed the pres­ti­gious Sam­ford Chess Fel­low­ship. He now at­tends Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty as a mem­ber of Class 2019. Apart from his no­table suc­cess at the chess­board, Nar­o­dit­sky has en­hanced his sta­tus as a prodi­gy by his au­thor­ship of two in­for­ma­tive chess books, Mas­ter­ing Po­si­tion­al Chess and Mas­ter­ing Com­plex Endgames.

If the em­i­nence of one's par­ents is any in­di­ca­tion of the in­tel­li­gence of their off­spring then the achieve­ments of this young prodi­gy can be no mys­tery. His par­ents, Vladimir and Lena Nar­o­dit­sky are Jews from the for­mer So­vi­et Union. Vladimir is a fi­nan­cial ad­vis­er and math pro­fes­sor. Lena is a pi­ano teacher at the San Fran­cis­co Con­ser­va­to­ry of Mu­sic.

"He'as a very se­ri­ous kid," says fa­ther Vladlimir. "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" What is young Nar­o­dit­sky se­cret? "You have to study," he says, "be­cause if you skip a week it's not OK. 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."

NOTE: a pic­ture of Nar­o­dit­sky has been sent to the Guardian.

In any case, one is avail­able on the in­ter­net.