Life In 19x19

Go-games can be reviewed in many different ways as there are several parts to a game like direction of play, fuseki, joseki etc. If you would get an review, how would you like it?

Please spare a moment of your time to do this survey we made, it will only take about one minute to finish: survey and if you have even more to say, answer in the thread!

Will you publish the statistics of the survey some time after the announcement?

It always strikes me as very odd to pay like a handful of Dollars/Euros to get an offline review, if I can get one hour teaching under ten Euros nowadays. I won't say making good reviews is easy, I only find the price kind of unbalanced. I think the only way to compensate this is to make bundles with at least ten games with a discount, but then the question arises if the earnings meet the amount of work.

I try my best to bring an empty cup to the teacher. I might have very specific questions. But I'm ready to discard them as irrelevant when the teacher shows a much better way to play that completely avoids the position.

Furthermore, I feel that I can often only focus on one or two big things from a review. There might be much good details, but it's only the big things that stick.

I completed the survey in detail and I hope you find it helpful.

Generally I think a review should have two elements.

1) The reviewer should identify 1-2 major strategic flaws in the game, and show how those key decisions have affected play in many stages of the game. I'm probably only going to take 1-2 lasting insights away from any particular review.

2) The reviewer should answer specific questions raised by the player pertaining to anything they want to ask about.

Well, to be honest, the people who gives me reviews are very kind, and they explain everything in great details, but the problem is that I really can't understand what the hell they are saying, so I do not like reviews and I always try to avoid them.

Sounds like a case of information overload. For ddks usually a good way is to identify 1-2 key mistakes in a game and let the rest go. I do believe however, getting your games reviewed is absolutely essential for improvement.

I filled in the questionnaire adding as much detail as possible.

Thanks a lot guys for your feedback.

What we are researching at atsumi is how convenient could it be to have a website where you can upload a game to review, ask questions, and it becomes very comfortable both for the student and for the teacher to work on it.

This survey is being quite clarifying about what people look for in reviews. A very bad symptom we notice is that a high level (almost 50 %) of players that have remaining questions from a game, end with the questions unanswered. Thats an obvious block to improvement.

I doubt we are going to make the results public, but if you have a particular interest for it, send me a private message, karaklis.

This is the surveys final steps as we are designing how the service would be like right now.

We might post a draft of the service to ask for your evaluation .

Helel wrote:I may play losing moves, but they are the right losing moves, and no one should dare telling me any different.

Well T games are different, but when I review with an opponent they:

1. show me that if they hadn't done one silly little mistake they really should have won.
2. show me that even if I hadn't done one huge mistake they still would have won.
3. show me that if I only had played joseki they would never have lost that corner.
4. show me that all their dead groups really ought to have lived, and all my live groups ought to have died.
5. show me that if I had not been unsporting enough to deny their fiftyeleventh take back they would have won.
6. show me that they really did win, and that I sure was stupid to believe otherwise.

That's probably a pretty natural tendency, but I've noticed that stronger players (SDK and up, generally) don't indulge in it.

I think the main difference is that rather than asking your opponent "what would have happened if I'd played here?" stronger players tend to ask "what should I have done here?" If you get your opponent's ego working with you instead of against you, things go more smoothly.