He was born in '68 so 37 at the end of 2005 when we met.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

I can begin to see glimmers of how you could remember your own moves in a game just by asking "OK, what's the best move here." But remembering what your opponent played seems much more tricky!

I think I can remember most of the Malkovich games I've played here from memory, but I have to first remember the first few moves.

Once I play the first few (maybe 10 or so) moves, I'm reminded of the game, and can replay most of it.

I think it's because you can remember the thought you had at that time, and play from there. But to get to that point, you need the first few moves to get into the groove.

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be immersed

Yes, that's the hardest. Non-sequiters (probes) your opponent makes during battles are especially tough. But usually if you get stuck somewhere, thinking about shapes that arise later will jog your brain into saying "ah-ha! he made this exchange a dozen moves ago because it affects the ladder!"

Remembering where your opponent played in a local sequence isn't as hard because you know the end position and the rest is usually forced. What's really bad is when your opponent tenukis. When you tenuki you often remember what you were thinking at that time and then manage to recall your move. When your opponent tenukis there usually several possibilities. Then you just have to guess and continue until you get to a point where the game doesn't add up anymore. For example white needs to play 2 times in a row to get to the game position or black would have never played this obvious aji-keshi move now. Then you have to backtrack and try another point where the sente/gote roles were switched and start anew. This can get tiresome

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While I was teaching the game to a friend of mine, my mother from the other room:
"Cutting? Killing? Poking out eyes? What the hell are you playing?"

While I'm terrible at anything memory-related, I'm tempted to try to start practicing this. While it won't necessarily improve my go (unless I study a ton of pro games or something), it seems really useful to be able to review OTB games, or record a game after it's played. Basically, the cool kids can do it, so I want to. =D Not to mention, it may help joseki study and such, to be able to remember games where they were played.

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Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

Yes.

Often when reviewing a FTF handicap game I reach a point where I say, "Where did you play next?" The reply is usually, "I don't know." And there we are.

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

The thing that helped me the most in training my ability to memorize my own games, was memorizing pro games.

Once a week I would memorize a new pro game -- from paper record, on a real board and stones (not computer)

I could usually replay the game for several days later, or until I memorized the next game, whichever came first. But soon after, I was able to remember most, if not all of my own games immediately after playing them.

I haven't been practicing lately, so my ability to remember my own games has waned a bit. But its really not as hard as it sounds.

And I started when I was around 12k

Right. I started trying to memorize pro games myself. So far, I've memorized 23 moves of one game. I have the SGF but I play it out on an actual board from memory. I haven't been able to work on it very much because a lot has been happening lately. But hopefully I'll be able to continue working on it tomorrow.

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Slava Ukraini!

That's not the approach I would take. I think playing it on a board is really good, but not playing the next move until you have memorized the last one seems like a bad approach. I would say play through the game normally, placing stones on the board as well, and then when you're done, see how far you can remember. It also helps a lot if you choose a game which has commentary available for it, as that helps a lot in understanding why each move was played, which is critical to remembering a game.

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We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

Optionally, play all the way through the game quickly, trying to get a feel for the 'shape' of the game. Playing through on a real board using a printed game record is harder, because you have to find the next move yourself. This can be frustrating at first, but working out the next important area and looking there trains your intuition. While you are doing this, you are thinking about the moves, but not too deeply. You will get faster and faster at finding the next move and get stronger at the same time.

In contrast, studying on a computer is faster and easier, but also spoon feeds you to some extent and can encourage you to click through the moves too quickly. Computers are better if you use the setting many programs have to display a numbered diagram. I know other people won't share my opinion on this, these comments are just based on trying different things, asking many strong players and finding the most effective study method for me.

After that, you can replay through the game and try to remember the shapes and important areas move by move, as Dusk Eagle suggests. This time, try to play through more slowly and think about why the pro might've played each move and what the meaning of it is. Also think about what you would play at each move and why. Compare your reasoning with the pro's. This will help you learn a lot, but will also help you memorise the game, if that's what you want to do.

You can do a third pass over the same game if you still have time, to test how much you've remembered.

When you're replaying on a real board, use one hand for black and one hand for white. This makes replaying faster, and also activates more parts of your brain, possibly creating more relationships. This is my theory, but is based on reading extensively about neuroscience. I know some very strong Chinese players who agree with this method, though they don't feel any need to explain how it works. Again, I know other people may disagree with or laugh at this idea. That's fine, but I would recommend trying it first.

You can alternate this method with sometimes skipping the initial play through, so you don't have any prior knowledge of the moves. View each move as a problem position and think about how you would play, before seeing what the pro does.

This advice, along with doing lots of life and death problems, has helped several players who I've taught become dan level players quickly. On the other hand they may have become dan level in a short time anyway, because they really liked Go.

Lastly, don't pay too much attention to what I, or anyone else tells you. Experiment with all advice and find the method that works best for you. In all things related to Go, try to follow the advice of Bruce Lee, To paraphrase: "Study everything, take only what works, reject what is useless and add what is uniquely your own". (There are various versions of this quote, but this captures the sentiment well enough)

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David

Go Game Guru: Learn Go | How to Get Better at Go | Go Game Shop | Go Boards | Baduk TV

Interesting skill this memorizing. I can't remember my own games, save the guessing based on common openings. In which game did I play that opening? I only play a couple of common josekis too. I doubt I could remember the complex ones like taisha and avalanches.

If professionals and strong players can reproduce positions just out of memory, what is the 'game' part that they play? Do they read or do they mostly recall from memory? I know I recall some principles and choose among them. Studying improves my game because I can recall more principles. Benefit of tsumego is to memorize shapes. I'm pretty bad in actual reading.

Reading is greatly assisted by having patterns stored away in your memory, because it speeds things up and helps you decide which moves you should be reading. Basically experience makes your reading more efficient.

At one point I did some extensive reading about this sort of thing. I'll try to tell you what I can recall right now, but if anyone knows more or wants to add in specific details, please do.

There have been many studies done of elite people in various fields like chess, tennis, football, motor racing etc... They were exploring the often quoted 10,000 hours of practise that it takes to create 'genius'.

Chess masters can easily remember many games, and play blindfold, too. Do they have better memories than people in other fields? Not significantly. Do the skills transfer universally? Generally not.

In tennis people have analysed Roger Federer playing Raphael Nadal. It seems like he has super-human reflexes. Does he? Well when they tested his reflexes they found they were pretty average.

So what some Scientists think is going on is that specialisation enhances the brains ability to process patterns and 'chunk' information in that specific field.

A person of average intelligence can only remember a certain number of things at once (I think it's generally quoted as 6-7 max, but see... I can't every remember that with certainty right now ). The point is that a skilled chess or go player doesn't remember more pieces of information than the average person, they just chunk it more efficiently into bigger pieces, so that they can store the whole picture. That's the theory anyway.

Likewise, Roger Federer actually starts moving sooner than most other tennis players when playing against Nadal's serve (and that of other players). But this isn't reflexes, he starts moving before Nadal's racket even even makes contact with the ball. Because of intensive training his brain has developed the ability to process the patterns in the serve and predict quite reliably where the ball is going to go. Also, he is incredibly fit. Watching it on TV though, it just looks like he's got super-human reflexes .

If you get a master chess player to play go (I have taught one), they will pick it up faster than other people and be quite strong at reading, because of the transferable skills. However, they won't necessarily be good at tennis. Likewise, Roger Federer is probably pretty good at table tennis, but not necessarily at go.

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David

Go Game Guru: Learn Go | How to Get Better at Go | Go Game Shop | Go Boards | Baduk TV

I'm 4 kyu and I can't memorize whole game, but just after game, I usually remember at least first 40 moves. But what I found interesting is that the more time passes after a "nice", interesting, tough match, the more i remember the moves. I actually find myself dreaming about game from a week ago. I guess my unconsciousness is mulling over the game.

I think I remember reading something about similar studies...One of the telling results with the chess masters was that they were able to quickly memorize and reproduce positions taken from real games, however fared no better than an average person when reproducing positions with random or nonsensical piece placement. I would imagine part of the abilities with players like Federer is that in tennis (much like in chess and go) there are certain shots in a a given position that make more sense than others (e.g. they will be easier to transfer more power or generate more spin). If you know how your opponent is trying to set up the point, you better interpret their body mechanics, anticipate their next shot, etc.

Perhaps one of the big differences is becoming better able to read "intention" from subtle cues and developing a better expectation of what should "naturally follow." It's something we do all the time in everyday life (a fact often exploited by illusionists and other entertainers), but for what I guess could be called artificially constructed activities (games, sports, etc) we have to build these expectations from scratch.