Hello dear OGSers,
Today an interesting question popped up in the chat: what makes a good review?
Because I’m such an opinionated reviewer, I just had to take this opportunity to blurt out all my thoughts on the subject and dump them in the chat immediately. 
This is the result. I felt the need to preserve it here, at the very least for the great contributions of other users. Apologies for the chatty format
[1:12] emauton: I found this while looking around about this question the other evening - http://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/5563/how-to-play-teaching-game-and-give-a-useful-review
[1:12] Animiral: ok so, usually when you give a review, your first approach might be to just flip through the moves 1-200whatever and if you see a mistake, point it out
[1:13] Animiral: oh wow, that is great!
[1:14] Animiral: the top answer is already pretty extensive
[1:15] Animiral: for a teaching game, I’ve used different methods, e.g. the student can undo at any time, especially after a particularly disastrous sequence (will probably happen)
[1:16] Animiral: In my reviews on GoKibitz (the better ones), I do my commentary linearly front to back, but only after I’ve looked over the game and already know what I want to focus on
[1:17] Animiral: A good review should have a spanning theme, like “aggression”
[1:17] Animiral: it should bring the student’s worst mistake down to an understandable explanation
[1:18] Animiral: like “if you had done this one thing better, you might not have lost”
[1:18] Animiral: I usually leave a “summary comment” at the end, addressed to “Dear Student,” followed by the pros and cons of their play and some suggestions on how to improve
[1:19] emauton: <3
[1:19] Animiral: I believe that suggestions are very important. Never leave a comment on a move like “this is bad because you are pushing from behind.”
[1:20] Animiral: Student’s face: “wtf, what else am I supposed to do then?!?”
[1:20] Shadonra: hm, really
[1:21] Animiral: I remember reading somewhere that the human brain doesn’t accept negative resolutions, like “you should avoid pushing from behind”
[1:21] emauton: FWIW, I really appreciate all the attributes Animiral lists when I’m working through a review from a strong player.
[1:21] tinuviel: that’s true, positive suggestion is way more understandable than negative “don’t do that”
[1:21] Animiral: That is why I always formulate a positive suggestion
[1:22] Animiral: yes, tell them what to do, not what not to do
[1:22] Animiral: that can get a bit tricky when you get to unnecessary exchanges (which should be left out)
[1:23] Shadonra: i don’t like to give away the answer
[1:23] Animiral: I usually turn it into “be careful” and “make purposeful moves”
[1:23] Shadonra: often i’ll say that a move is bad and ask for a better one
[1:23] Animiral: Oh! Excellent point the Socratic method!
[1:24] emauton: The Gocratic method? :o)
[1:24] tinuviel: middle ground: suggest a few legit options and ask them which they’d chose
[1:24] Animiral: I don’t use it much in online comment-style reviews (like on GoKibitz), but live with the student, it is absolutely a good idea
[1:24] Animiral: You have to fight their short attention span, so if you can engage them with a question, make them think, do it as often as you can
[1:24] emauton: Gocrates, Playgo, and Ataristotle …
[1:25] Animiral: LOL
[1:25] emauton: :o)
[1:25] Animiral: As for justifications:
[1:26] Animiral: When you say that A is better than B, you always need to give a justification
[1:26] Animiral: Like “A makes you heavy, B is light, and you are willing to sacrifice the marked stones”
[1:27] Animiral: Always reason from concepts, not just variations
[1:27] Shadonra: see, i have a problem with that
[1:27] Animiral: The student must apply their new knowledge in every situation, not just the one that you are reviewing
[1:27] Shadonra: i think if you’re not showing variations there’s something wrong
[1:28] Animiral: You can leave it to them to generalize and find the idea behind the move, but if you use concepts like “thickness”, you can connect that idea with the situation on the board in their head
[1:28] Animiral: If you include variations, they are examples, not the justification itself
[1:28] Shadonra: variations are the justification
[1:29] Shadonra: that’s my firm belief
[1:29] emauton: I think a student needs a certain level before variations do much more than cause ayes to glaze over.
[1:29] emauton: *eyes.
[1:30] Animiral: hm, let’s assume that the student is strong enough to understand the benefits of the variation over the game
[1:30] Animiral: they’re just left wondering: “great, now how am I going to find this next time in my game?!”
[1:31] Animiral: This is where you need to introduce the concept behind the good move
[1:31] Shadonra: well, either they’ve considered the variation and discarded it as inferior, or they didn’t consider it
[1:31] Shadonra: in the first case, they can adjust their judgment; in the second, they’ll learn to read more carefully
[1:31] Animiral: Maybe they would have considered it if they knew some idea that they should be looking for
[1:31] tinuviel: shadonra, animiral is talking about how a kyu remembers the application for the mext game
[1:32] Animiral: A concept can also be a proverb, like “make a fist before you strike”
[1:32] tinuviel: next
[1:32] Animiral: You can tell them “you should have connected, there are too many weaknesses”
[1:32] Animiral: which is the same thing, but the proverb is memorable (hopefully)
[1:32] Tokumoto: yeah, High Kyus, Low Kyus, and dans have different needs, don’t they?
[1:33] mark5000: I have very specific needs, yes.
[1:33] Tokumoto: hah
[1:34] Shadonra: i’ll try it, i think
[1:34] Animiral: About reading more carefully: this is where I’m usually defending my own opinion, that reading is for computers and not so much for humans, against all the other dans, who swear that reading is the cornerstone of playing strength 
[1:35] Shadonra: i learned around 3d that you can’t play go without reading
[1:35] Animiral: You start reading because you have to, you don’t start with it
[1:35] tinuviel: 3d, eh?
[1:35] Shadonra: hehe, 3d
[1:35] Animiral: At the start of your move, there is an idea
[1:35] Animiral: Like “take the last big point in fuseki”
[1:36] Shadonra: i never really did that, either
[1:36] Shadonra: just killed peoples’s stones
[1:36] Animiral: ^^
[1:36] tinuviel: I’ll be sure to log that away
[1:36] Animiral: Maybe you should read what I told aik in the forums
[1:36] Tokumoto: “i learned around 3d that you can’t play go without reading” -Shadonra
[1:36] Animiral: maybe you’ll disagree ^^
[1:37] Animiral: I go from an idea, something that I want to accomplish, or some plan that I have for the development of the position
[1:37] Animiral: Then I consider some move and try to read if it accomplishes that goal
[1:38] Animiral: Of course, it’s great if you examine more than one move, and if you find out that it doesn’t work, it helps to be honest and not play it anyway
[1:38] Tokumoto: I’m glad to hear what Shadonra said. So glad
[1:38] tinuviel drops the mic
[1:39] Shadonra: right, i think exactly oppositely to what you told aik
[1:39] Animiral: 
[1:39] Tokumoto: I guess there’s still hope… for me that is
[1:40] tinuviel: i love watching dan players argue like this: nice reminder that there isnt only one way to go about this
[1:40] tinuviel: pun not intended
[1:40] VincentCB: arguing is what dan players are strong at
[1:40] Shadonra: what i want to do with the board depends on what i can read for each situation
[1:40] Animiral: One last thing that I try to do with reviews: colorful language, exotic phrases. Use expressions that they don’t read in every review, like “ultranuki” (I just made that up)
[1:40] Tokumoto: “For every thing a dan player says they did to become strong, there’s another dan player who did the opposite” -calantir
[1:41] Shadonra: heh, that last one we have in common
[1:41] Animiral: exaggerate the message and use superlatives. “Black just got the biggest bestest wall ever while white lives with 2 points”
[1:42] Animiral: don’t forget to mention features that “dominate the whole board” or moves that “land a knock-out blow”
[1:42] Shadonra: oh, i usually try to teach people a trick play
[1:42] Shadonra: trick plays are a great way to improve
[1:42] tinuviel: mark5000 has some pretty memorable one-liners from reviews
[1:42] tinuviel: I’ve turned some of them i to memes
[1:43] tinuviel: into
[1:43] Tokumoto: “Wishful thinking is a bad habit.” -mark5000 I thought this line was tailored for me
