I tinker with blender for months now but this is my first “useful” work.
I personally like the candles a lot, but I’m not satisfied with the lighting. It’s partly too dark, I think (depends on how your desktop looks like, i.e. dark or light). On the other hand if I try to change the lights it becomes too bright or even darker.
Cevina
I like what I see, but you’re right about the lighting. There seems to be a great deal of detail lost in the object on the table. To the point that I’m not certain what it is.
A spotlight duplicated, think 14 times will give the omni-directional lighting that a candle or bulb will throw.
At the risk of sounding like a braggard and incurring the wrath of others, the bulb in basement 2 is lit just that way, check it out if you like.
http://www.geocities.com/woodsmith102000/ElsdonsSewerWIP.html?1038099082470
Hope this helps.
Elsdon
I like what I see,…
Thanks!
And already the first update 
Now I use 4 spotlamps per candle (in my case I can ommit the lamps to the ceiling and it’s a candle after all not a spotlight), each limited by the sphere option. This makes it possible to keep the background dark. Moreover a normal lamp for the ambientlight.
I also moved the wall way back. That directs ones eyes to the table and in particular the goboard on it and not the unimportant wall. That’s at least what I noticed after that change.
Tina
http://home.arcor.de/tehirsch/blender/gogame_1024x768_update1.html
I like the second one better. Nice picture. I also like the overall mood of the picture with the contrast between the dark and light areas. Excellent work.
Paradox
I like the update too. Although the floor kinda seems a bit too blurred and aliaised (can i get a spellcheck on that?). Maybe you could turn down the filter on the floor texture. Overall, i like what Im seein’. Kinda reminds me of the Hellsing anime series.
The board is aliased, and looks as tho it was meant to be turned the other direction (go boards aren’t square, and the long side points along the axis between the players - also are normally made with the grain of the wood along that same axis)
nice work. I would make the floor tile a little smaller, the table looks tiny
Thanks all!
I’ve never noticed before that our goboard isn’t square :o
on the other hand I’m just a stupid european who likes playing go but has not cared about the philosophy behind it 
I made now the board non-square and changed also the direction of the grain (though its hard to see).
To get rid of the aliasing of the floor I just scaled the texture a bit. As a side effect the stones are smaller :).
To reduce the aliasing of the grid on the goboard I switched from rendering a grid as wire to a texture.