How to review your own games

[peppernut]

I like Bill's suggestion of trying to find the losing move. You can take an even more basic step than that though, and look for the general reason that you lost.

The thing is that at the kyu level most games are not that close. Either somthing died or someone made a much bigger moyo and turned it into territory. That means that the reason the losing side lost is probably related to either a life and death mistake or an invasion mistake. Were you too jealous and invaded too early or often? Were you too scared to invade? Did you neglect a move and cause a weak group to come under attack? These sorts of things are what I look for to try to find the losing move. I find it's often earlier than you think it is, and barring a l&d mistake, it's usually more of a strategic error than a single clear losing blunder.

[EdLee]

The thing is that at the kyu level most games are not that close.

Where is the data to back up that statement.
My feeling is the statistics for kyu game results are no different from dan game results: it's a bell curve of sorts.
I don't have the data, either. Curious to see the curves.

Either (1) somthing died or (2) someone made a much bigger moyo and turned it into territory.
That means that the reason the losing side lost is probably related to either
(3) a life and death mistake or (4) an invasion mistake. ...and barring a l&d mistake,
(5) it's usually more of a strategic error than a single clear losing blunder.

(Added enumeration.) No to all five.
Kyu levels, by definition, are still very shaky on the basics.
This means most kyu games are littered with basics mistakes -- mistakes in
shapes, tesuji, life-and-death, direction, counting, cap race, ko, joseki, contact fights,
invasion too deep, invasion too shallow, invasion too early, invasion too late, invasion completely the wrong idea,
reduction not enough, overplays, underplays (too slow, too small, etc.), misreads, ... etc., etc.
The list goes on and on. It's practically endless, especially at kyu levels.
At kyu levels, both players make tons of these mistakes. Even if there is a very clear
blunder, all the other moves are still full of these mistakes.
How a game is won or lost depends on each individual game, and the two individual players.
It is the outcome of the myriad of mistakes (and of course, also the good moves) by both sides.

[peppernut]

The thing is that at the kyu level most games are not that close.

Where is the data to back up that statement.
My feeling is the statistics for kyu game results are no different from dan game results: it's a bell curve of sorts.
I don't have the data, either. Curious to see the curves.

I don't have data either, but it is logical. The less skill of the players, the bigger the errors. Errors have a negative value measurable in points. So I agree that it probably will look like a bell curve, but the curve should be fatter the lower kyu you go. In short, the less skill of the players, the higher variance.

No to all five.
Kyu levels, by definition, are still very shaky on the basics.
This means most kyu games are littered with basics mistakes -- mistakes in
shapes, tesuji, life-and-death, direction, counting, cap race, ko, joseki, contact fights,
invasion too deep, invasion too shallow, invasion too early, invasion too late, invasion completely the wrong idea,
reduction not enough, overplays, underplays (too slow, too small, etc.), misreads, ... etc., etc.
The list goes on and on. It's practically endless, especially at kyu levels.
At kyu levels, both players make tons of these mistakes. Even if there is a very clear
blunder, all the other moves are still full of these mistakes.
How a game is won or lost depends on each individual game, and the two individual players.
It is the outcome of the myriad of mistakes (and of course, also the good moves) by both sides.

I agree that kyu games can be a practically endless series of errors in kyu games, but we're talking about reviewing your own games. How is a kyu player supposed to evaluate these errors when the concepts aren't clear? Some of these mistakes can be identified by a kyu player, but many cannot.

That's why I think when you get a game that's won or lost by a large amount, right there you have a hint as to where there might be a large error or a conceptual mistake.

I have a feeling though that we're just not going to agree on this point. All I can say is that I find starting from the big picture, asking myself "why did I lose this game" and looking it more generally helps me find improtant things to study quickly. I find it easier than going through all the moves and trying to identify every mistake. That's the kind of analysis you want to do with a teacher, imo.

[EdLee]

I don't have data either, but it is logical. The less skill of the players, the bigger the errors. Errors have a negative value measurable in points. So I agree that it probably will look like a bell curve, but the curve should be fatter the lower kyu you go. In short, the less skill of the players, the higher variance.

Not necessarily. Because there are two players. When both players are making these big errors,
the net effect of all these big errors can be... a very small win-loss margin, or a medium margin, or, a large margin. Who knows.

I agree that kyu games can be a practically endless series of errors in kyu games, but we're talking about reviewing your own games. How is a kyu player supposed to evaluate these errors when the concepts aren't clear? Some of these mistakes can be identified by a kyu player, but many cannot.

Agreed. Correct. (1) Many, maybe even most of these mistakes, cannot be identified by the (kyu) player.

That's why I think when you get a game that's won or lost by a large amount, right there you have a hint as to where there might be a large error or a conceptual mistake.

This is where we disagree. Because of (1) above, which we agree, I can only speak from my experience (pro reviews),
and from watching hundreds of other (pro) reviews (of both kyu and dan games),
the win-loss margin does not, in general, tell us where we went wrong.
Sometimes, it is one place (or even one move) -- which may not be easily identified by the player;
other times, it is many mistakes. Either way, it goes back to (1).

I have a feeling though that we're just not going to agree on this point.

That's OK.

[Polama]

The biggest difference between a review and a game is that you can go backwards and forwards in time during a review. Perhaps you got to a point where you've got no choice but to form an empty triangle to keep some stones connected. During the game you were reading "do I really have to do this? Ok, I guess I do". How you got there wasn't relevant. But in a review, it is. Perhaps the local configuration of your stones and your opponents stones aren't great for you. Could you have played something slightly different earlier? What if you had attacked your opponent here before he attacked you?

Reviews of games of weaker players often include a series of moves where the reviewer says "excellent! White can basically win the game by playing here. Oh, he didn't. Well, now black can stop that by playing there. Nope, he didn't. Ok, they're still playing yose moves...no, don't need to defend that, it's alive. Nope. Nope. Ah, white finally saw it and he's now way ahead." Once you spot a move where somebody got ahead, maybe cutting a group or walling off the center, go back and ask yourself "could the other player have prevented this the turn before?" "Was the attack available the turn before that?" each turn until you think you've found when that area should have first been played. Then just look at that board position for a while, trying to connect it with the move, trying to figure out what reading would have lead you to see this.

In a commented professional game there will often be a 20 move sequence demonstrated that ends with one player capturing or clearly ahead, to explain why they didn't take an obvious move. Knowing the sequence, I try to recreate the thought process of reading that out. Not just reciting the shown sequence, but trying to figure out how they saw the tesuji involved, which other paths they pruned out and why, that sort of thing. I'll get 3 moves in, and there will be 5 reasonable looking moves, and I know that for some reason 4 of these were pruned early, so I try to figure out what about the right one makes it better. Can I read the other 4 far enough that it starts looking bad? Can I use how the sequence shown went to figure out where the other choices are likely to have gone wrong? Is there something with # of liberties going on, or good shape, or a tesuji I should know? You can do the same thing with capturing races or other fights in your game. Whether you won the fight or lost it, can you go back to the start and, now knowing how it ends, read it out?

[Bill Spight]

These sorts of things are what I look for to try to find the losing move. I find it's often earlier than you think it is, and barring a l&d mistake, it's usually more of a strategic error than a single clear losing blunder.

Sensei's Library has a very nice feature, the Big Question Mark (BQM), in which players often ask how to play from a certain position of the whole board. Very often the real answer is, you already made a mistake.

[EdLee]

Bill, wow! Big Question Mark