School has another chess champ
By MELISSA BUSCH
phillyBurbs.com
Playing chess for four hours a day paid off for Dan Yeager.
The 15-year-old is this year’s Pennsylvania State High School chess champion, and his high ratings recently earned him the title of national master by the U.S. Chess Federation. That also makes him the fifth Hatboro-Horsham School District student to receive that title or better in the last 41 years.
Dan Heisman, scholastic coordinator for Pennsylvania’s State Chess Federation and a 1968 Hatboro-Horsham graduate, said it’s rare to find so many chess masters coming from a public school.
“It’s pretty weird — inexplicable,” Heisman said. “No similar school in the commonwealth can say this.”
Heisman, a full-time chess instructor who has taught Yeager and now gives lessons to satellite radio shock jock Howard Stern, said Hatboro-Horsham has a chess team, but it didn’t have one when he or the other three masters attended in the 1960s and 1970s.
Here is the full story.
dan is a nice dude.
Dan Heisman is a really good chess writer. His Novice Nook and other columns and his books are clearly written and offer very practical advice that have helped my daughter improve her play.
Dan’s chess tactical puzzle book Looking For Trouble brought a fresh and important angle to the study of tactics.
Dan’s brand new book Back To Basics: Tactics in part emphasizes tactical positions that arose from live chess games played at the club/class level.
These puzzles may be more relevant to most players, since most players are at the class level. The reason is that tactical positions taken from master games tend to be different than the tactical positions that usually decide games at the class level.
More book reviewers should ask “Does this book add something new and novel to the large body of chess literature?”. Some very good chess books nonetheless suffer a large overlap with other books already available.
The above two books from Dan H. do bring something new.
GeneM
CastleLong.com
Dan Yeager Chess team,Hatboro-Horsham, plays in Lower Bucks Scholastic Chess League in PA.The League is dominated by New Hope Academy Chess Team.