Harold van der Heijden

Harold van der Heijden is a Dutch composer of chess endgame studies. He was born in Veghel, The Netherlands, on 18 December 1960. By profession, after obtaining a PhD in 2009, he is senior researcher and head of the Research and Development laboratory (and manages 25 research technicians) of a veterinary company.

His collection of endgame studies is considered to be the largest and the most comprehensive in the world (his currently available version has 93,839 endgame studies – see link below). This collection is helpful for judges in anticipation checking. He was consulted by judges of many tourneys and also organized and/or judged several endgame study tourneys himself. In 2001 he was awarded by the Permanent Commission of the FIDE for Chess Compositions (PCCC) the title of International Judge for Chess Composition for endgame studies and in 2012 the FM title for chess composition.

He has published well over 160 of his own studies. With his 128 studies participating in tourneys, he won 37 prizes, 44 honourable mentions and 23 commendations. He was appointed by the Permanent Commission of the FIDE for Chess Compositions (PCCC) as Section Director of the FIDE Album for the endgame study section starting with the 1998-2000 Album until the 2007-2009 Album.

He was editor (1989) and later chief editor (1993) of the magazine EBUR of the Dutch endgame circle ARVES. EBUR merged in 2007 with the famous international endgame study magazine EG founded by John Roycroft in 1965. He was also editor of this magazine since 1991 and took over chief editorship from John Roycroft with the merger of the magazines.

Be sure to have a look here: www.hhdbvi.nl

Recent news

Underpromotion Milestones – part 3

11/28/2024 – Finally, in this three-part series, we come to the first full Babson task endgame study, composed by Gady Costeff. Many thought it was not possible to fulfil this extremely difficult task. Harold van der Heijden describes the full story. But one problem remains: the position is not legal. Costeff had already constructed it in 2011 and tried in vain to find a legal version. So this is still an open problem. Maybe you can give it a try?
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Underpromotion Milestones – part two

11/6/2024 – Recently, the famous Babson task (Black promotes to one of the four possible pieces and White must promote to the same piece in all four cases to win) has been conquered by in an endgame study. Many thought it to be impossible to realize this extremely difficult task. In this second part of the three part series Harold van der Heijden describes how study composers progressed towards solving the problem.

Underpromotion Milestones

10/25/2024 – Pawn underpromotions do not happen often in practical games, but they have been an important topic in study composition more than a hundred years. Recently, the famous Babson task (Black promotes to one of the four possible pieces and White must promote to the same piece in all four cases to win) has been conquered by Gady Costeff in an endgame study. Many thought it to be impossible to realize this extremely difficult task. In this first part of the three part series Harold van der Heijden describes the beginning of the story with the first underpromotions including the famous Allumwandlung.
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