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.