I am searching for a full Go game played by masters of the game. This is in order for me to give me a “bird’s eye view” of the nature of the game. I would like to see the moves being made one at a time and listen to (or read) some commentary being made about the moves and strategies being deployed in the game. Can you help me find a Go game being played like this?
2 Likes
Thank you very much. Sounds good. I’ll look into it right away.
Note that @attorante suggestion is aiming at player stronger as 9k (and i agree fully with that).
As novice, commentaries of pro games may mostly be very high and hard to follow.
In some of the books aimed at novice it happens that they present a game like in
“Go for beginners” Iwamoto Kaoru (a full 19x19)
And a small game in the beginners book of Cho Chikun. (Forgot the exact name, Ishi press).
If you are not too shy (shouldn’t be) you can watch games here and ask questions to the others watching (players can’t read them during the game). That’s called kibbitz.
Thank you.
There should be a lot of resources for that kind of thing.
You could read Relentless, about the games between Lee Sedol and Gu Li.
Link here on ogs Play Go at online-go.com! | OGS
or more specifically hosted by ogs https://cdn.online-go.com/relentless.pdf
You could watch pro players comment other pro games like Michael Redmonds playlist here
example recent video
or sometimes his own games
You could watch other pros like Yeonwoo Cho or Eunkyo Do comment games
There’s pros that talk while playing games:
There’s a section on Go Books • SmartGo for commented pro games.
The Go Consultants sounded like an interesting book.
Have you ever wondered what pros think about during a game? This book gives you a unique opportunity to find out and you will frequently be surprised. The book follows a game between two teams: Go Seigen and Kitani Minoru (the young hot-shots) versus Segoe Kensaku and Suzuki Tamejiro (the established top players). The members of the teams were allowed to consult with each other in another room between moves, and a reporter made notes on what they said and what they did on the practice board. As a result we have an incredible record of what the players were planning and hoping for, what they thought their opponents were doing, and what they decided not to do as well as why they made the choices they did. There could not be a more thoroughly commented professional game.
It might even be interesting to watch for instance the streams of Lee Sedol vs AlphaGo
They’re really nicely commented by Michael Redmond and others.
The above playlist also has the games against Ke Jie.
There’s also the documentary
1 Like
The OP said “novice” so I completly disagree.
There are very few games commented aimed at a novice public. The one you mentioned are for intermediate players already.
1 Like
They said they’re a novice, but they didn’t say the commentary had to be aimed at novices. So I also disagree 
What they said was:
which I think is exactly what I linked.
I watched the AlphaGo streams live when I was a beginner, and I’ve rewatched them since, and you get something different out of them each time.
2 Likes
Seems obvious to me. Commentaries differs a lot according to the audience.
A novice will appreciate between the thousands of games he can find easely to know which ones are especially presented for him, better as which one you like yourself.
It’s no sense to recommend relentless to a novice. My opinion.
The two games i introduced have commentaries that are very well fitted for beginners. I mean what is really obvious for an intermediate player isn’t for a novice. I hope there are more commented games like these to feed the wishes of this public, just let us know about them.
If i make myself abstraction of the ability to understand then Invincible is a wonderful book, with at least some historical notes worthy.
2 Likes
The John Fairbairn books are excellent for having a good pacing with lot of commentary for each move (or small number of moves).
The books by Yuan Zhou like “Understanding Pro Games”, also take a similar approach (low moves-to-diagram ratio, commenting one or a few moves at a time) and are aimed at kyu players (maybe around 12k-1k ?) and being understandable for weaker players, so if you’re searching for something like that they may be more accessible.
I enjoyed the Fairbairn books a lot as both a kyu (SDK) and dan player, and they provide a lot of interesting biographical/historical background and storytelling, which I loved.
What I read long ago of the Yuan Zhou books was also very clearly written and seemed to cover key sequences to me when I was around 5-6d+ KGS, and though aimed at lower ranked players I still appreciated the thought and care put into the depth/sequences.
(There are some key, in-depth variations shown but explained very clearly such that I think weaker players could understand them well.
Sometimes pro commentaries contain a lot of longer sequences, or concepts which require more foundation to understand, by contrast, which I feel might be more difficult for weaker players to understand well.)
I think they would be easier/possibly clearer for weaker kyu players to understand than the average commentary too; though personally I enjoyed Fairbairn’s books and working to understand the games/commentaries, even at 3-4k+ KGS.
3 Likes
I like this; live commentary of games often has a more general target audience than dedicated resources which non-serious players likely won’t ever hear about much less read. The AG-Lee Sedol games, the AG-Ke Jie games, Haylee’s Let’s Play Baduk series, &c.
2 Likes
One i was curious to hear about. Hope to get to it some day
1 Like
Oh, wow! Thank you very much. I can’t wait to dive right into all that.
1 Like
When someone else plays computer game its usually clear what’s going on even if you don’t know the rules.
But Go is more like a language. If you don’t have a lot of experience yourself, you barely will understand anything even with commentary.
Go is more fun to play than watch.
1 Like
Really? I think it’s the same with videogames as with Go. When I first started watching HK speedruns, without having played the game, I was quite lost and nothing was connected in my mind. But the more I played the game, the more I could watch speedruns and understand where they were, what was going on, &c… I think some people just have a lot of familiarity with videogames, which might be mistaken for videogames being inherently easier to understand
1 Like
If you are really new to the game (like you have only played a handful of games or less), I don’t think you’ll be able to understand much of a full game between masters, even when it’s commented.
It may be better to start with watching a commented tutorial game on a small board:
And perhaps you’ll need to watch some of the previous lessons to understand that video.
If you feel that commented game is easy enough for you to understand, perhaps this is a good follow-up (a game between 2 stronger players, though perhaps not quite masters):
3 Likes
Yep, sorry, we could first ask how you define yourself as a novice?
2 Likes
Thanks. I’m certain that I’ll learn a lot from all these great responses I’ve gotten from everybody here. It’s like going into a department store; I don’t go there to buy everything but it’s great having so much to choose from!
4 Likes
Well… when I don’t know something, then I’m a novice about the “something” that I don’t know. Some of the things I’m a novice about are simple things: like where is the light switch for this office? Or where is the closest gas station? Who can I talk to about this phone bill?" And, of course, I’m also a novice about most of the things in a calculus textbook but I am still incredibly interested in calculus and hungry to learn more and therefore I keep several advanced mathematics books in my home and visit them on a regular basis – and I feel that that time was well spent. And so this is about how I am approaching “Go”. I’ve been a chess player for most of my life. I’m not a master in anything; but I’m extremely interested in everything! Thanks again for including your answer with all the other great answers I got from my original question!
6 Likes
Thank you. Looks like more great information.
1 Like