Score estimation practice from archive games

General Go Discussion
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I would :purple_heart: to see this…

For score estimation practice, imagine an app or web page which retrieves filtered* games from OGS archives and shows the final board position, capture count and komi. Users estimate the score manually, perhaps points are awarded based on speed and/or accuracy. I’m geeking out on score estimation currently; I realize it’s not everyone’s idea of fun. When playing on a real board, I’ll thank myself for the practice

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I wouldn’t call that “score estimation”. It’s just counting final score. Everything is done and closed. It’s quite mechanical.

I’d like to learn how to properly estimate the score balance while the game isn’t finished yet! :grin:

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I’d be interested to see how I predict my own games if I saw a midgame position a few months after playing it (and not realizing that it was my own). Watching up to 2 dan I feel like I can pretty accurately predict, but my own games I’m out by +/- 30 points due to hubris or despair.

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That’s interesting!

In my experience, dan’s games are much more complicated than mine (4k) and I have problems just stating if a group is dead or not. Very often they “throw” few stones in difficult places and leave them abandoned and I can’t tell if they’re captured or not.
With my games it’s usually easier unless I’m wrong about some tsumego (I think a group is dead but it can be saved or the other way around). That can set me off by some 30 points, but it’s my fault and I eventually recognise it in the endgame.

What I actually do sometimes is to evaluate the score balance and write it in a comment (private or Malko) in the game’s chat. So that later I can compare it to the score estimation by the AI, after the game is finished. That’s good practice. The comments have a reference to the move, so it’s easy to navigate them later.
I usually write something like:

  • it’s pretty even to me
  • whoa, I lost at least 20 pts here!
  • I think I’m behind by about 30 pts now
  • is that group in the corner alive? Should I put a stone there?

and so on…
It’s quite hilarious and instructive when I compare them to the AI after the game is finished.

It’s very easy to me because I only play correspondence, so I have plenty of time to count and to take notes. Doing that in a quick live game could be difficult though.

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