Reviewing low kyu games

 A very common piece of advice given to all level shogi players is to ask for advice from stronger players, especially in terms of reviewing their games.  I cannot argue with this obviously, because it's solid advice.  But I think not all strong players have an equal quality of critique, and I think it's important that we, as both lower and higher ranked players, understand the context and expectations for what kind of reviews should be given. 

Before I start, this is all my personal opinion, not a condemnation of others' teaching styles.

The most important aspect of reviewing the games of a player below 5kyu is, most of all, to help guide their way of thinking instead of analyzing specific moves.  Here's a position from a game I once analyzed between a beginner and a low level AI.

 

The player had taken a gold on 53, declining promotion to fork the king and the gold.  They then followed with ☗N-41+ ☖Kx ☗T-31 ☖K-42.  Had this been a player who was closer to dan level, I would recommend the player do something along the lines of ☗R-32+ ☖L*42 ☗N-45 to make the ☗N-41+ idea more powerful, but at this level of play, not only would this careful style of surrounding before executing be difficult to put into practice, it might not even be necessary.  Before 5kyu, I believe simply following the idea of "try to get material, and try not to lose material" is enough to win games.  Thus, instead of an optimal line, ☗Nx61+, trying a knight for a gold, is sufficient to maintain an advantage.

Get an advantage, and don't give up the advantage.

This is the building block for getting stronger in shogi.  It takes a surprising amount of time before you'll have to study any amount of theory in order to put this plan into action.

Here's another position:

 

In this position, gote played ☖Tx47, exploiting the pin on the gold with the idea of bringing down the rook on the 5th file to make the sideways attack against the king even stronger.  I don't think it's too hard for a higher level player to look at this position and say, "Oh, well there's almost no way not to mate this king."  That's true, but showing all the mate lines isn't productive critique and may even serve to overwhelm the player.  I believe simply reminding the player that trading a tokin for a gold is usually a positive is sufficient commentary here.  "Get material advantage, and don't get distracted." 

Aside from giving advice on specific positions like the examples above, I believe it's also important to soften how you discuss the whole game for lower level players.  I know it's tempting to provide a beginner with a fully-annotated kifu that points out every point they could have made better moves, but not only will this often not actually make any sense to the recipient, it may even only discourage them.  While it's important to remind players to think carefully about every move, the simple fact is that they very often are still training this ability.  Therefore, fully annotating every move won't often have a tangible effect on their move-by-move thinking - they just need to gain that ability themselves.

For this reason, I've found that it's very effective to simply pull two or three major positions out of each game and discuss them.  For example, if a player misplays the beginner Double Wing Attack joseki, I will simply grab the point in the game where they made a mistake and ask them to watch Hidetchi's video on the subject.  If they miss a critical checkmate tesuji, I'll set it up as a tsume problem and ask them to solve it, only explaining further if they fail to understand.

 

I like to finish off my beginner analysis by summarizing my thoughts on the game into two or three themes that I would like them to remember.  For example, "In the future, make sure you double check to make sure your pieces aren't hanging when you make an attack," or "Make sure your moves are making progress towards the king."  I believe these kinds of summaries will stick into people's minds easier than line after line of shogi notation.

Of course, this is just general advice.  Your advice should cater to each specific person you teach, and some people are more equipped to handle advanced advice than others.  As your student increases in rank, so too should the level of your analysis.  One player's "You did a good job advancing the silver behind the pawn" could very well be "Why the hell did you play climbing silver in this situation?" for someone else.