Personal/private annotations in games, are they possible?

Is it possible to add private annotations to a game’s move as you are playing it? As a beginner, I would find it very useful to jot down what I am trying to do, especially when playing several different correspondence games at once.

The malkovich log is what you are looking for I believe, it can be used by clicking “chat” while on the game of your choice. This will make it so your opponent can’t see what you are typing UNTIL the game has ended.

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If I understand correctly, the answer is “No, no fully private annotations are possible.”

It is however possible to temporarily hide your annotations from your opponent—but not from observers— until the game is over.

Or did I miss something?

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That is a fair summary :slight_smile: at the moment completely private notes are impossible to do on OGS

Tournaments aside, there is no reason to be overprotective of your faulty reasoning.

Having a record that isn’t subject to “yea that’s what I actually wanted to do when I played this move that clearly has nothing in common with my reviewer-informed post-hoc reasoning” facilitates staying honest with yourself reviewing and working on improving said faulty reasoning.

Plus if someone wanted to cheat in a game with you, looking at your malkovich notes is probably the worst option.

Here’s the thing. If you malkovich yourself “I want to play C3”, that’s almost useless. If you write something according to the formula “<emotion> <intuition> <assessment> <reading>” for every important decision, you’ll have enough data to actually reshape all these aspects of your game (psychological, habitual, logical, visual).

Example: “I’m scared of b’s moyo potential on top, and I feel that invading it is urgent, because I am 20 points behind and if b seals the top with one more move, it seems an invasion just dies. After L17, K17, L16, K15 b can just drive that group into his wall and that’s gonna be all she wrote”.

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aha, i will print your excellent message and read it again when I leave the high 20s k level…

Right now I am more worried about embarrassing myself with comments like “I have no clue about what I’m doing but I will try K17 and see what happens”

But seriously, your formula is excellent, I just wished I could use it sensibly. In a year perhaps…

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Well I’m working on a little project right now which should help people in need of a structured approach to the game. If my “last” (also current) project is any indication, I just might finish it in the year 2525 before the year is out. :sweat_smile:

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LOL, I’m around 9 or 8k, and my M Log is FULL of comments like “totally clueless” :joy:

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