Our Training
Caissa Hong Kong Chess Club focusses on child-friendly chess instruction. The club uses the Dutch Step Method to develop players from complete beginners to advanced tournament players.
The club has produced National Youth Champions and several of our members and students have represented Hong Kong at the highest level like youth world championships.
By enrolling into any of our training courses students can participate in our-students-only last week of the month competition and put to pratice against their peers all the learnings - and perhaps win a prize!
Step Method
The Step method of Rob Brunia and IM Cor van Wijgerden has been around since 1987. In the1980s, Cor van Wijgerden, who was at that time the national trainer of the Royal Dutch Chess Federation, made many stencils with exercises for the Dutch top youth and women top players. But demand for this kind of exercises for lower level players began to grow too and experienced trainer Rob Brunia joined Cor van Wijgerden and through both their profound knowledge of chess technical and didactic aspects the Step Method evolved into a solid teaching method that fits the development of a child.
Nowadays the Step ethod is successfully adopted by many chess clubs and schools in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria and steadily the method is gaining popularity throughout the world.
The whole course consists of six manuals, specifically for chess teachers or trainers (the first steps are also suitable for parents), and 20 workbooks (3/4 for each step) which can be used by the students themselves. Total 27 books. 26 of them have been translated in English.
Many books have been published in other languages than Dutch, like German, French, Swedish, Turkish, Greek, Czech, Azerbaijan and Danish.
It is important to understand that the Step method is not just about solving (mostly tactics) puzzles. Puzzles are a critical tool to practice concepts and acquire skills, like pattern recognition. However, more than all that, the Step Method offers a platform, a chess didactic context, from which trainers can support chess growth of their students through playing games and analysis, just as important as doing puzzles.
In addition to train on tactics, concepts and chess ideas through the Step Method, play is a crucial part of our training. A typical class consists of introduction or handling and refreshing a topic, e.g., double attack, then working in the Step workbooks and then friendly play, supervised and commented on by the coach as needed.
In addition to playing chess as part of the lesson we organise for our students only the so-called EOM, End of Month, competition where our students play in groups of their own strength. Click on the link above for more information.
We offer to several schools chess as an after-school activity, with different accents for each school befitting their strategy and positioning of chess as an activity to be held at school.
During school holiday breaks we organise 5 day chess camps of 3 hours per day. Intensive but fun. A photo impression of the Summer 2024 Camps is here.
The Caissa Talent Programme (CTP) is an intensive and demanding training offering for our most advanced students who are contenders of top places in their age category. This is by invitation: more information on CTP is here.
Of course we organise FIDE rated and friendly tournaments, dozens throughout the year, at our center, at schools or at external venues where or students and other chess friends join.
We also take our students to events abroad, accompanied by a trainer and we have e.g., visited Macao, Mainland China, Thailand, Singapore, Japan and The Netherlands.