How to review a game?

This website depends on honorable people like you who are willing to help other players reviewing their games. Besides spreading the beautiful game of go and helping other players to enjoy it more I believe that this is also a good way to improve your own play. Knowing the theory is one thing but being able to explain it to others and apply it to real games is even more challenging.

Guidelines for reviewers

  • Reviews should be polite and friendly in general.
  • Comments should not be just negative but should provide better ideas or at least reasons why a certain move was not good.
  • In your review you should focus on the player who requested the review. Anyway it often helps to also show some mistakes of the opponent, e.g. if there was a chance to punish a bad move.
  • As a last step please add a summary of important points to the review in the "Review summary" section.

Here are some good examples of reviews that where considered helpful:

 

Workflow to review a game

  1. If you have not registered yet first Create a new account.
  2. You find all unassigned review requests under Open review requests. To accept a game review click on "Accept request" either in the list of open requests or in the request detail view. The game will be assigned to you and will no longer appear in the list of open requests.
  3. The accepted game review can be found under My games. Here you can download the sgf file by clicking on the filename which you find below the go board under "Original sgf file". Take your time to add comments and variations with your preferred sgf editor.
  4. After adding your comments and variations upload the commented sgf file under "Commented sgf file" and add a short game summary. Both can be found in the "Edit" tab of the game review page.
  5. If you want to be a bit more fancy you can also create a video review. Use your preferred screen recording software to capture a video review and upload it to Vimeo or Youtube. Add a link to this video under "Video review" on the game review page. Just click on "Select media" and paste the URL to your Youtube or Vimeo URL. The video will be embedded into the game review page.
  6. After finishing the review click on the "save and publish" button at the very end of the "Edit" tab of the game review page to inform the player who uploaded the game that the review is ready to be checked.