Nathan Divinsky - Chess Life

Chess Life

Divinsky learned his early chess as a teenager at the Winnipeg Jewish Chess Club, along with Yanofsky. He tied for 3rd-4th places in the Closed Canadian Chess Championship, held at Saskatoon 1945, with 9.5/12, along with John Belson; the joint winners were Yanofsky and Frank Yerhoff at 10.5/12. In the 1951 Closed Canadian Chess Championship, held at Vancouver, Divinsky scored 6/12 to tie for 5th-7th places. He won the Manitoba Championship in both 1946 and 1952, and finished runner-up in 1945. He tied for first place in the 1959 Manitoba Open. Divinsky scored 7.5/11 at Bognor Regis 1966, finishing in a tie for 7-13th places.

He represented Canada twice at the Chess Olympiads, in 1954 at Amsterdam (second reserve board, 0.5/1), and in 1966 at Havana (second reserve board, 4.5/8). Divinsky served as playing captain for both teams, and was the non-playing captain for the 1988 Canadian Olympiad team. Divinsky attained the playing level of National Master in Canada, and received through the Commonwealth Chess Association (founded by English Grandmaster Raymond Keene) the honourary title of International Master (although he did not receive this title officially from FIDE, the World Chess Federation).

Divinsky was also a Life Master at Bridge from 1972.

Divinsky served for 15 years, from 1959–1974, as editor of the magazine Canadian Chess Chat, and contributed occasionally to other Canadian chess magazines. He played an important role in chess organization in Canada from the 1950s. He first served as Canada's representative to FIDE (the World Chess Federation), from 1987-1994, and served again in this post in 2007. During both terms, he served as a member of the FIDE General Assembly, since Canada is a zone of FIDE. He is a member of the Canadian Chess Hall of Fame, served as President of the Chess Federation of Canada in 1954, and was a Life Governor of the CFC.

He has written several books on chess (see bibliography below). Chess historian Edward Winter in a 1992 review was very critical of Divinsky's The Batsford Chess Encyclopedia, calling it "A Catastrophic Encyclopedia". Winter in 2008 selected it as one of the five worst chess books in English from the past two decades. Winter's 1989 review of Divinsky and Raymond Keene's book Warriors of the Mind was also negative. In this book, the authors compared great chess champions throughout history using an advanced mathematical treatment; while necessarily imperfect due to generational evolution in chess, it was in fact the pioneering work in this field.