Game review: the one fix hiding in your own games

Your own games are the best Go textbook you will ever own, and the one book you can't read by yourself. You can't see your recurring mistake for the same reason you can't hear your own accent. Someone stronger can, in a single game.

A good review is not move-by-move nitpicking, and it is not an engine spitting out "this was −2.3." It is a stronger player finding the pattern: the habit that turns up game after game and costs you the most, then giving you one thing to fix instead of forty. The turning points are usually a few specific moments — where a winning game slipped, where a fight went wrong, where the move that felt safe was actually losing.

You replay a recent game on the shared board, your teacher narrates the moments that mattered and the leak underneath them in your language, and you leave with a single focus for your next ten games. Bring one of those back, and you both watch the fix landing.

Common questions

Which game should I bring?

A recent loss, ideally one that felt close. Losses teach far more than wins, and a close one usually turns on the exact habit worth fixing.

Do you go through every move?

No. A move-by-move replay teaches very little — it buries the one thing that matters under forty that don't. Finding your recurring mistake, and giving you a single focus, is the point.