Harold Van Der Heijden

Harold van der Heijden is a Dutch composer of chess endgame studies. He was born in Veghel, The Netherlands, on December 18, 1960. By profession, after finishing his PhD in 2009, he is head of the Research and Development department of a veterinary institute.

His collection of endgame studies is probably the largest collection in the world (counting over 73,000 studies as of July 2008). 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.

He published well over 100 of his own studies. With his 70 studies participating in tourneys, he won 22 prizes, 25 honourable mentions and 13 commendations (as of July 2008). 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.

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.