Andrew Green's Reading List

"The Steps Method is for chess coaches and kids. It’s a Dutch curriculum, and it’s considered one of the best curriculums in the world. It is maybe a little bit out of date with all the electronic resources that are available, but it’s still very, very good. These workbooks go from complete beginner all the way up to master level. Basically, it’s a set of puzzles. But if you just buy your kid this for Christmas it’s not going to work. The way to get the most out of these books is you need a chess coach or chess teacher to explain the idea and then tell you “look, those are some exercises you can do, go solve them”. The chess teacher marks them and then they can see how you did. I think in the Netherlands, sometimes at chess clubs the coaches hand this out as homework. Some kids love it, they really like that approach. Some kids say “no, this is a workbook, that’s like schoolwork. I’m not doing that”. Yes, so that’s my one criticism of the Steps Method books, they are a bit dry. But some kids love it. Others want to go online and watch animations. These books are a good offline alternative. If you’ve had the 30 minutes of screen time and you still want to do some more chess, there’s your Step book. Yes, that was basically the very first Steps book for beginners to learn chess. They decided that the pace went a bit too fast, so they broke it down for younger kids. Again, some kids love it, some kids don’t, but it’s definitely something you could try."