Advance from playur to pro with Game Review 🐼
If you've ever wanted to see whether your wild risks were worth taking, the new game review is for you! 
Game review allows you to look back through your games to learn from both your best moments, and your mistakes. Under-the-hood the review uses our flawless bot, the Panda, to analyse your moves.
In this blog post, we'll discuss 3 things we have learnt from the game review. I'll then guide you through how you can use the game review to gain a deeper understanding of the game. If you want to follow along, you can also check out an example game review here.
What the Game Review has taught us 📚
Our new Panda bot, and tools like game review, have upended a few common beliefs about the Royal Game of Ur.
Our bots used to be inexact, so we could only learn so much from them. But the new Panda bot is now flawless! We can now trust that it is correct, even on it's crazier looking moves. This gives us the confidence to learn more about advanced strategy from the Panda.
Don't be afraid to take risks!
One of the biggest things we have learnt was summarised well by Arthur: "Panda is a degenerate gambler 😤". This one was a surprise! The Panda took a lot more risks than pro players did, before its release. Below is an example. Ektur made a move that looks very good on the surface: it brings their piece to safety, and lands on a rosette. And yet, the Panda tells us that it was better to leave your piece vulnerable!
I would summarise this as the following for your own play: Don't be afraid to take risks! They might just pay off, and the game review is here to help you to learn which risks are the right ones to take.
The central rosette isn't so important after all
Under the Finkel ruleset, the central rosette was always considered to be supremely important. It keeps your own piece safe, and can block your opponent from advancing. However, the new Panda bot has shown us that maybe we shouldn't sacrifice too much to hold on to it.
In the position shown below, the Panda doesn't just consider capturing off the central rosette to be the best move, it considers it to be brilliant! Previously, we may have debated whether it was worth it to lose control of the central rosette so early in the game. But now the Panda shows us that capturing here is definitely best!
My rule of thumb has become to always capture off the central rosette in the early and mid-game, unless your opponent has a better chance of winning it back before you. Here, Ektur has two pieces ready to fight back for the central rosette, so capturing off it is brilliant!
Sometimes it is best to not capture in Blitz games!
With access to tools like Game Review, you might think we now have the whole game understood. Not quite... Ur still has some curve balls to throw at us!
Below is a move that surprised many of our pro players. In this position, in a Blitz game, it is better to not capture! The Panda tells us that Proserpina would have had a 0.9% higher chance of winning if they had avoided capturing their opponent's piece! This really stumped us for a while.
Our leading theory on this move is that this move is a good setup move. Since your opponent has so many vulnerable pieces ahead of you, you will still be able to capture in future moves. Therefore, it is better to wait to capture until later, so your opponent has less opportunities to counter-attack... Endgames in Ur can get real tricky!
How can you use the game review?
After you finish a game, click the Review Game button. This will take you to the review for your game, where you will be presented with a wealth of information about how your game went. What does it all mean? Let's unravel it.
First, look at the top-right on desktop, or the bottom of your screen on mobile. There, the review introduces the players, their accuracies, and a graph charting the light player's chance of victory throughout the game. The graph falling means dark has a higher chance of winning, and the crown is given to the player who won. 👑
Next, the Panda summarises your game and offers you some key metrics about your moves. Your moves are categorised from brilliant down to unfortunate blunders. I recommend focusing on the extremes: cherish your great and brilliant moves and strive to avoid blunders.
Once you are done with the summary of your game, click the prominent Review Key Moves button. Clicking this button will carry you to a specific move to review in more detail. You will be shown moves that the game review thinks are the most relevant for you to learn from.
You will be presented with detailed insights about one of your moves. In the example shown below, a mistake is highlighted to learn from. The Panda suggests that taking the central rosette would have been better than introducing a piece. The board shows this suggestion, with your move highlighted, and the best move marked with a star.
After reviewing your move, you can click the button to progress to the next move that the Panda has selected for you to review. The Panda will usually pick out 6-8 moves for you to review in each game.
It's time to embark on your own reviews!
Now that you know the basics of the game review, you can try it out on your own games!
Once you finish a game, click the Review Game button to review your game. Alternatively, you can also select past games from your profile to review. If you don't have an account, but still want to give the game review a try, you can have a look at the example game review here.
I hope the game review will help you to elevate your skills to new heights!
Thank you all,
~ Paddy L.