I for one cannot, but it seems natural to Hikaru. I suspect he has photographic memory.

it takes practice. as you get stronger, it gets easier.

I can recall up to the late middlegame at least for most games I play. For long or intense games such as in tournaments, I can generally recall the full game, perhaps with minor mistakes. I do not have a photographic memory.

I don't think this is unusual, certainly other people of my strength regularly do the same thing. To a large extent, I think it's a skill that you can (perhaps must) naturally pick up as you put effort into getting better. And more than that, it's a skill you should try to develop; not only is it useful, it is very natural if your moves make sense and have thought behind them. There's a strong correlation between my finding it hard to recall a move and deciding that move wasn't good!

It can be hard at first, but there's nothing magic about the skill, it's just another thing to learn. You can develop it by putting in effort to try to review your games by replaying them without checking the game record. You might not be able to get far at first, but just doing it will improve your memory and help you remember what you need to.

All that said, don't necessarily feel this is something you need to focus on. If you're stronger than around 7k, it's perhaps actively worth working on. If you're weaker, do work on it if you find it interesting, but other skills are arguably more important...as is simply playing games. Again, of course, playing and reviewing properly will naturally improve your game recall ability.

Part of being able to replay games in your head involves really understanding why you made certain moves. If you have a strong justification for your move, even if that justification may have been wrong, all you have to do is replay your reasoning to yourself. Which is usually not that hard, because unless you're significantly stronger when you replay the game than you were when you played it for the first time, you're probably having similar, if not identical thoughts while replaying it.

Then the trick just becomes remembering your opponent's moves. Often this is easier than it seems too. Sometimes when playing a certain move you play it in anticipation of a specific response. Then you can remember whether the response was as anticipated or if you were surprised. It's easy to remember points where you were surprised by an opponent's play. And if it was as anticipated, then your previous thought process about why to play your own move should guide you toward the opponent's next move.

The hardest moves for me to remember are those where my opponent tenukis in the opening or middle game.

I don't have a photographic memory, but am pretty good at remembering games (serious ones I have put thought into, so real-life tournaments or my OGS games). I recorded into yose most of the 20 games I played at the the 2-week long Polish Go Camp when I got back home. I reckon I have a mental buffer of a few dozen games and then new ones start to push out the old. I've not yet recorded my games from the WMSG, I suppose I should before they get fuzzy...

The hardest moves for me to remember are the first 4, then it's easy

If I record tournament games, I usually record them in the days after the tournament. I can usually remember all five games from an average weekend tournament several days later. This has gotten easier as I got stronger. IMO, one of the reasons is that my opponent's moves are more logical the stronger they are, and are therefore easier to recall.

I started doing this a little while ago and it was a complete failure at first (I couldn't even remember what colour I was ), but it seems to be getting easier. I haven't had another go at recreating a game I've just played yet, but I've memorised a pro game and I've found I can easily recreate my malkovich game up to the current point.

Does anyone who does it find that recreating a game from memory is a better way of reviewing? Part of the reason I wanted to do it is that I thought it would make me much more likely to consider each move instead of just clicking through, and possibly also more likely to notice when problems reoccur in multiple games. I figure if you can remember your games you might be more aware of what your style of play is actually like.

I can remember most games after I play them, up to a few days. I can remember longer if I reviewed it.

I have trouble remembering games against beginners, and games where I wasn't paying much attention.

It's been common for me since I was kyu player, and I don't consider my memory any special from regular person.

Hikaru is a cartoon character, that helps with his memory.

I too can remember a game for a few days. I sometimes get iffy on move order, especially in the endgame, but the flow is there. Remembering it well does depend on a few things though: reviewing helps greatly, as does playing seriously, and oddly enough, I tend to remember best when the game is against a stronger player. There are also some players I can remember games against much better than others.

I find protracted Ko fights make games very, very hard to memorize accurately. I'm not particularly good at remembering my own games after I play them, but I found it wasn't terribly hard to memorize certain pro games (good Takemiya moyo games came easily). It just took time and repetition.

When play gets flighty with a lot of probes and jumping from area to area without playing out sequences a game is really hard for me to memorize (hence the protracted Ko fight issue). When the game is largely composed of see 10-20 moves at a time of local play sequences where most of the moves are sente it is exactly the opposite. Games that are a flurry of no-seki, hamate, and blunders (like most of my games being a lowly kyu player) are as messy to memorize as they were to play in the first place.

So, at least for me, not all games are equally easy to memorize / recall in detail.

- Marty Lund

For me, it really depends on the games. Some games I can remember until middlegame, others I can only remember local areas and not their timing, and others I can only remember with my opponent replaying his side.

I try to record my games most of the time in tournaments for that reason. If possible, I try to recall it straight afterwards for reviewing, but it's not always doable.
I used to do it in paper, but now I use anDGS.

_________________
a1h1 [1d]: You just need to curse the gods and defend.
Good Go = Shape.
Associação Portuguesa de Go

Why is this a useful skill to acquire? I can't see what benefit it would bring other than the ability to review games later on.

I'm not questioning the stronger players who have said it is, I'm just failing to see how it helps...

Well, pattern recognition is very important in Go. The more games you can remember, the more patterns you will be able to remember and recognise in your future games, remembering what moves worked out well in particular shapes, and which did not. Even once your ability to recall a game move for move has faded you will still remember certain shapes in them and when these arise in your future games the past experience with them can help.

Only once I've made it to memorize one of my tournament games. It was the first day of a tournament and I felt mentally fresh. On the other days I had to give up quite quickly. So memorizing your games in the mid-SDK ranges requires to be mentally fit and some extra effort beyond pondering on the game moves.

I imagine it's a sign of election, rather than virtuous in itself.

I mean, the game is going on in your head. All the black and white stones that have been played are there, and all the invasions and joseki and forcing moves that haven't happened yet are there, too. Your eyes are in your head, your connections are in your head, your cutting points are in your head. If you understand what's going on in the game, you're going to remember it afterwards. If you don't understand it, you're going to have one of those "argggh, I forgot about that!" moments, and that will be the end of it.

For another question: Last week I studied a joseki in the evening. The next morning, still in bed, I tried to replay the joseki in my head. I managed, with difficulty, somehow. But then I tried to discover why some variations wouldn't work. Here i failed. I couldn't visualise the variations. Maybe that is why after 30 yrs I am still only 7 kyu.
So, what is the question?: can you, dans, visualize deviations from josekis and their refutation without aid?