How to review your own game (offline vs. online)

I’m starting to play more seriously and trying to improve. Review is obviously one of the most important things to do.

Curious how people get most out of reviews?

Two situations I face:

  1. Online games: my opponent usually won’t stay to review. I’d use AI to check out the recommended plays, but I don’t always fully understand why AI played where it played. I also don’t fully understand why my move is bad, unless it leads to one of my groups being dead soon.

    This helps with reviewing basic Josekis and life and death problems, but I am not learning a ton other than that.

    Only effective way I know to learn more is asking for reviews from strong players in this loving community, but is there any other ways people found effective in self-reviews?

  2. Offline games: my opponent is usually happy to do some reviews afterwards. This has proven to be really helpful especially when I am playing someone stronger than me. They would point out how they’re thinking about the situation, and the bad variations if I played the way I did.

    But I don’t get to hear what AI thinks. I’ve tried a few times to replay everything on an OGS demo board, but just can’t remember everything. Having someone to review on the spot is probably still better than self-review with AI, but feels like we both might be missing some mistakes AI would’ve caught.

Love to hear the community wisdom on this!

Edit: For context, I’m about 4 kyu on OGS and 1-2 dan on Fox

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That’s the easiest. You can record the game while you play (on paper or on an app). If it’s a quick game and you don’t have time to record it, take a picture every 20 moves, so you’ll be able to reconstruct it. And it’s easier to reconstruct the game if you’ve reviewed it with your opponent just after the game.

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This is a good idea. I thought about it but felt like my opponent might feel disrespected or weird I’m doing that. Guess I might be overthinking here :slight_smile: I’ll start taking pictures next time

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Just ask your opponent if he doesn’t mind, before you do that.

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Great idea thanks! Do you know any tricks with self reviews?

I am doing it with AI as mentioned but feel like I am not getting a ton out of it.

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See also this thread.

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Great!
by order of importance
1 Play
For serious games, play in face to face tournaments. Don’t worry about your competitive level, everyone is welcomed.
2 Review your game

Yep that’s the common attitude online but you can still try to ask in each of your game for a quick review afterwards.

AI is not a perfect tool, grab what you can from it and don’t worry for what you can’t

Reviews in real life are surely the best that can happen to you, and losing the AI analysis is not so big issue compared to what you get.

If you ask your opponent, I guess a quick pic every now and then won’t be as shame and disturb him.
I think it’s better as recording, less distracting you.

With some practice (and reviews) and considering games you played really seriously, you will be able to reconstruct the game from scratch.

3 Do tsumego.
Training the reading is obviously fondamental and lead to progress. Just be sure to keep fun

4 other activities
teaching, watching videos, rengos, books, watching games etc …
All these will contribute to some progress but apparently in a less efficient way. May still be a necessary part.

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Thanks @Groin @jlt! Makes a lot of sense.

I’ve also thought about starting an online review without AI, and just play out some of the variations I think I made mistakes around.

This is because once I see AI suggestions, it becomes hard for me to think deep and form my own opinion around what’s good. It’s like trying to solve a math problem with the answer written on it.

Not sure if people recommend/tried something similar?

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Of course, that’s what everybody did before the existence of AI.

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That’s what I do before checking AI if I’m taking the game seriously. I work backwards without AI trying to pinpoint when and why I lost, and trying to find better variations. Then I turn on the AI review and assess if my self evaluation was correct

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What worked well with me was to get just a few critical advices by game, no more. Understanding them well and trying to correct and advance in the next games.

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This. You might be surprised at how much you get out of self-review. Just go through the moves again with the benefit of hindsight, and you’ll notice things you didn’t see during the game.

AI analysis or review with a stronger player is a bonus. It’s still good to do a self-review first, then check your impressions against the AI’s suggestions.

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Sometimes your own move isn’t actually all that bad, it’s just that the AI move is even better. Focus more on looking for reasons why the AI move might be good. Or think of AI as offering you a wider range of choices, rather than just good versus bad. For example, “I thought I needed to defend this territory, but the AI said a completely different strategy was also playable”.

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Thanks for the wisdom dump here! @Samraku @Groin @xela

Yeah I know that’s what people did pre-AI, just wasn’t sure if that’s still an efficient way now we have AI in the arsenal. This makes a lot of sense

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I still prefer that and during an active period in which I played around 6+ slow games per day, playing then self-review was nearly all I did to go from 1d to 5d KGS in some months at the time (pre-AI).

Self-reviewing was very helpful to me, I understood possibilities better and could explore shapes that I didn’t understand during the game (even read out as thoroughly as possible to try to comprehend them, if I wanted to), it also allows more analysis than one might have the opportunity to do in games. (or to go back to key moments and look at the possibilities)

I remember it helped me also to try to deetermine key junctions or things I could have done differently in each game, even when I was around 3-6k SDK level (I think similar to your level), and to check for any global errors I could have made (like defending in gote, missing a point to tenuki, missing the bigger key point…) and lay out different possibilities on the board.

(for example, what happens if I don’t play local move A but play big shape move B first, then the opponent plays A ? How does it look after 3-6 moves ?)

And you can also review together with other players who are not the opponent if you have the chance. It can help to get other perspectives from players who may have different strengths or insights into the situations.

(having a few comments occasionally from a Go player dan ranked friend on a position (even just something he glanced at during a few moves and noticed an important point or odd whole board direction) helped me too when I was SDK-1d)

I would say that it can probably also help a lot to put oneself into situations which one doesn’t really understand, or if you can see something to learn from, in the games, if you are playing to learn + progress – for example, some players intentionally put themselves into complicated fights they don’t understand or some other type or style of game with which they’re uncomfortable, to get experience and learn from that over many games.

Or you can change X about your game from the last games, then see how it goes and what new things you encounter.

(for example if you notice that you make too many thin shapes, you can try to defend when there is a different choice to make between tenuki or a shape move, or if you play too slow moves and fall behind you can try to take bigger global points sometimes even if it leaves a weakness/aji, to learn and find the balance)

Then you will have interesting material to review, too.

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@fuseki3 Thanks for these tips (and the review comments you left on one of my previous games)! Super helpful.

I tried following this on one game I played with someone offline yesterday. We went back and analyzed variations that might be better at key points. I pointed out a few places that I feel are better for my opponents to play, and later verified them with AI.

Turned out AI mostly agrees with me, and pointed out a few other places we didn’t notice.

We were able to learn much more because of the analysis we did without knowing the “right” answer.

I’ll be keep doing that in the future to get better. Hoping that gets me to 1 dan on OGS soon :slight_smile:

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Oh, that’s very nice to hear - great !! I’m often surprised by how much general analysis and intuiton I do by myself or with another player matches the AI and its ideas too, it shows how much our own analysis and sense can give, even if we use it alone.

And no worries :slight_smile: Good luck for reaching 1 dan !! ^^

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You may check this

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In case people are wondering about how this review method works, here is a real game where I and my opponent tried to analyze and review the game in depth without AI, and then used AI to confirm our learnings: meranyF vs. Shen0927 - You can see our entire thought process

I learned a lot more by first analyzing the game with my own understanding, and then using AI to confirm.

If I started with AI, I wouldn’t think nearly as deep for why AI played where it played, and why my moves were bad. I would’ve taken away much less from the game.

@fuseki3 is very kind to offer a wealth of his insights here again! This is even more fruitful to know how a strong player thinks about a game you’ve thought about deeply.

If you’re serious about getting better, I recommend giving this review method a try!

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