Games commented by the players themselves?

[C. Blue]

Are there any games available that have been commented on by the players themselves, in the manner of explaining what reasoning made them play their moves?
Basically similar to "The Master Game" videos as in this example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... bVQk#t=96s

[Bill Spight]

Yes. See http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=26

[quantumf]

My guess is that since this is posted in the "professionals" sub-forum, the OP might be talking about pro's commenting their pro games.

[Bill Spight]

My guess is that since this is posted in the "professionals" sub-forum, the OP might be talking about pro's commenting their pro games.

Well, if they do not post their own commented games, but someone else does, there are copyright problems.

[Uberdude]

Various professionals have released books commenting on their own games, for example recently there is Lee Sedol's book of his commented games.

[oren]

Lee Sedol's Commented Games are the best that come to mind.

The Go Consultants by John Fairbairn has a lot of in depth commentary on what the players considered during the game.

I have a few self commented books from Japan, but they do not have anywhere near the depth of Lee Sedol's who had his written when he was taking a break from professional tournaments.

[C. Blue]

<no delete button?>

[C. Blue]

Yes, I was referring to professional games. And I meant commentary exactly on his thoughts he had for each move. What is given in commented Go-Books that I have had a look at so far was basically that a few particular scenarios in the game were analysed, and variants given.
I'd rather like to hear the thoughts a player had for deciding to play each (non-trivial one) of his moves, rather than analysing why a particular scenario choice/decision he made was good or bad in hindsight. Basically the very way it is done in the video I linked.
Thanks, I will have a look at Lee Sedol's Commented Games and The Go Consultants by John Fairbairn.

[logan]

Yes, there are. A large percentage of professional games from Go World were self-commented. And there is a book specifically about this kind of commentary -- The Go Consultants, and I'm sure many others! Best of luck :)

[Bill Spight]

Yes, I was referring to professional games. And I meant commentary exactly on his thoughts he had for each move. What is given in all commented Go-Books at this time is basically that a few certain scenarios in the game are analysed, and variants given.
I'd rather like to hear the thoughts he had for playing each move, rather than analysing why a particular scenario variant he played was good or bad. Basically the way it is done in the video I linked. But I suppose this type of commentary might not yet exist in Go.

IIUC, The Go Consultants was part of a series.

I also like the commentary that reflects real time thinking. But it seems to me that a fair number of books in which players review their own games approach that. Like the Sakata no Go series, Go Seigen's Now I Would Play This Way, and Yamabe's Middle Game Question and Answer. None of these skimps on analyzing variations, OC.

[gowan]

Are there any games available that have been commented on by the players themselves, in the manner of explaining what reasoning made them play their moves?
Basically similar to "The Master Game" videos as in this example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... bVQk#t=96s

I confess I only watched about the first 10 or 12 moves of the video but it doesn't seem to me that the players were revealing their actual thoughts about each move during the game. Most of the "comments" were very superficial. I know go players think quite far ahead and I would expect any detailed revealing of the thoughts they had during the game to include their plans depending on which of many possible answers their opponent plays. For example Cho Chikun is famous for taking a long time on the opening which might involve, say, a half hour of thinking on just one early move of the game. If that were explained in detail it would take way more than half an hour of video since speaking is much slower than thinking. Go professionals examine dozens of variations before choosing moves at crucial points of the game. Do you want all that spelled out in detail? I doubt that you'd find that sort of commentary anywhere but in personal conversation with the player. Professional commentary usually is focused on explaining what is going on to amateur fans and includes a lot of things that wouldn't be thought about explicitly by the pro during the game and even very detailed commentary omits much that the pro did think about.

[Uberdude]

Something else you might be interested in are teaching sessions by Alexander Dinerstein 3p (breakfast) as part of his insei league. He plays a high dan on KGS, and then in his teaching room he talks through his thought process as he plays the game with his students, showing the various moves and variations he considers.

(I recieved no commission for this advert )

[Uberdude]

Go professionals examine dozens of variations before choosing moves at crucial points of the game. Do you want all that spelled out in detail? I doubt that you'd find that sort of commentary anywhere but in personal conversation with the player.

Have you read Lee Sedol's book? I'm not saying it has all his thoughts, but it is the most detailed commentary I've seen (300 pages for 3 games, at crucial stages of the game he may use over 30 diagrams of variations for just 2 moves of the actual game).

[gowan]

Go professionals examine dozens of variations before choosing moves at crucial points of the game. Do you want all that spelled out in detail? I doubt that you'd find that sort of commentary anywhere but in personal conversation with the player.

Have you read Lee Sedol's book? I'm not saying it has all his thoughts, but it is the most detailed commentary I've seen (300 pages for 3 games, at crucial stages of the game he may use over 30 diagrams of variations for just 2 moves of the actual game).

I haven't seen Lee's book but even at the level of detail you describe I doubt that it includes everything he thought about and probably much that he didn't actually think about but included for the sake of us weak readers.

I'm reminded of a true example of depth of reading. Nakayama Noriyuki, in Treasure Chest Enigma mentions a game between Kitani and Sakata in which, at move 77 in the middle game Kitani, in real time during the game, read out that a certain move led to a two-stage ko 37 moves later and also read out that he would have enough ko threats to win the ko. Think of all the diagrams it would take to explain that in detail. We'd have to hope that there were a lot of forced moves during the sequence but Sakata hadn't seen it. Of course that was a phenominal performance, and most pros wouldn't have read that far, Sakata didn't. I guess my point is that it is impractical to get commentary that includes everything the players thought about during a game. Maybe the OP just wants superficial things like "The left side was the biggest area so I played there", similar to the commentary in the chess video.

An example of something that could generate a lot of tricky-to-explain thoughts during a pro game is a tenuki from a joseki sequence to play elsewhere. For a long time after that both players have to be keeping in mind the unfinished joseki and judging whether to continue it.

[xed_over]

Lee Sedol's book is by far the best professional game commentary I have ever seen!! (but I haven't seen too many really)

the Consultants book is excellent too.