David Craig[1] Smerdon (born 17 September 1984) is an Australian chess player and economist who holds the FIDE title of Grandmaster (GM).

He achieved the norms required for the title at the Australian championship in 2005, the 7th Bangkok Chess Club Open, which he won in 2007 with a score of 7½/9 points,[3] and the Czech Open in Pardubice, Czech Republic in 2007.

[5] Smerdon is the fourth Australian to become a grandmaster,[6] after Ian Rogers, Darryl Johansen and Zhao Zong-Yuan.

Smerdon was educated at the Anglican Church Grammar School[11] and the University of Melbourne,[12] where he was a resident student at Trinity College.

[14] From 2013–2017, he earned a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Amsterdam and Tinbergen Institute under Theo Offerman for a thesis: “Everybody’s doing it: Essays on trust, social norms and integration.”[15] He worked as a senior lecturer at the University of Queensland, with areas of research in Applied Economics; Economic Development and Growth; Experimental, Behavioural, and Evolutionary Methods.