Hi,

I have started palying GO recently. I think I have more or less normal sence for direction of play for a beginner however it is very often when I am not sure at which exactly position to play the move that will help me to achieve my objective. This is why after two months playing GO at KGS I decided to use the help of the computer. I was thinking on the direction of my next move and then I used a software to gave me few options for my next move in that area of the board and I made my choice. It was not all the time but only for the moments in the game when I considered as important which was between 3 and 10 times per game. Later on I bought a board and stones and I was playing on the board different variations before submitting my next move.

So, I've been using my brains , the help of the computer and the board when playing ... and in few months I've achieved 17k.

These days I decided that it is not fair to play like this and I made new registration in KGS and I started playing only by looking at the board and visualizing my moves and the potential moves of the other player. I've just finished my first game and I am 25k now.

I still maintain my two accounts ... however I can not answer myself the question - how shoul I play GO and achieve better results in shorter time? What level (if any) of "not me" should I use when playing with others over internet? And is it fair to play like this?

Could you please help by sharing your opinion or experience?

Thank you.
P.S.
This is my first post here. I tried browsing through the forum and looking for similar topic but I could not find. If there were similar questions before please excuse me and just send me the link.

I wouldn't use the computer program for hints while playing somebody else. I'm not sure a good idea even when playing against the computer but if your program can do this, you might ask it why it made its move.

Working things out on (another) board instead of in your head might or might not be counter productive since you need to develop the skill of doing it in your head.

You didn't say what computer program you were using. At your level you might have options for "no need to pay for it" software that could ......
a) Help you learn joseki and fuseki
b) Elementary life and death problems.
c) Provide an opponent several stones stronger than you are. One who wil not be upset after you have made a bad mistake if you want to go back in the game to several moves prior to try to figure out what you should have done.

Please note, if do choose to use a computer program as opponent, keep it at least several stones stronger than you are and take just not quite enough handicap. That might be a quick way to improve. But if you set a computer program to be weakened down to your level so you could play it an even game, you are likely to learn bad habits from it. Of course you can learn bad habits from human opponents too if you keep playing the same few humans.

Thank you very much for the quick reply.

What I understood is that it is Ok to use a GO board to play some variations in the area I would like to play next before submitting my final move.

Until which kyu level I might use this kind of help and when it is advisable to play all the variations in my head, only?

I suggest you immediately stop using the computer for any help during any game.

Same advice for playing out variations anywhere else but in your head.

Both are considered cheating.

Certainly true in most circumstances, however on wbaduk you can enable the analyse board feature (during game-setup) to play out variations during the game on a second board, and on correspondence servers it's assumed that most players simply do it using an sgf-editor.

I even heard some people on KGS looking up joseki in slow games; not sure what I like about that.

As for using a computer to suggest moves, that is basically considered cheating anywhere. (Unless it's explicitly allowed, as it is in some forms of correspondence chess.)

@OP: maybe read through this for some input: Use of SGF editors and Computer Go programs during games

And apart from the ethics of these forms of assistance, I think both ultimately hold you back from getting better. I mean, you could just use a chess engine to play on a chess server and beat the world champion (if there is such a title in chess). Does that make you a good chess player?
I think not.

Hi and thank you for replying to my question.

Creating my account for second time in the server was the reason that I would like to use only my brain and immagination capabilities to figure out my next move.

When playing with my first account and using the computer from time to time to help me with suggestions for my next move and taking the final decision by myself was something what I considered as:
- using additional stimulants (or whatever they are called) by the sportmen to play a little bit better than their natural physical capabilities are;
- loan money from the bank to buy something you still do not have enough money for;
- using a consultant's advice (brain) to advice you in which company to invest money;
- ...

If when the sports player plays not with his/her own only strenghts and if people buy cars/houses/whatever with money which they still did not earned and if investing in a company by advising with a more experienced person is considered fair ... why 'borrowing' some ideas from the computer software is considere 'cheating'? I am playing to improve and I am just looking for the best possible way to do that. I am not playing in any tournaments or earning prizes and I am not going to take any or whatever benefit when after the game ends I will be ranked 19 or 18 kyu.

It will be useful to me if I could be adviced on the pro's and con's of each of the approaches and when or how long I should (if I should) use any of them.

As I mentioned I used this few times during a game where hundred moves are played. I did not say at all that I am using the computer during the entire game or half or third of it.

Thank you.

Agree for real-time games, but for correspondence games (e.g. on http://online-go.com/) playing out variations on a board/computer is widely accepted, but no computer help.

If you want to improve don't use the crutches of playing out variations or computer suggestions during the game, but by all means use them in the review.

P.S. When I played on OGS and played out variations offline the level of my play was higher than in regular games, but I don't think it made me improve much.

There's danger in using computers and having a second board to play out variations. Firstly, as others have said, some people might consider it cheating if you use them during a game. Secondly, you might come to depend on them too much and be completely lost when you have to give them up.

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Poka King of the south east.

I think this is something that is likely to come up more and more as time goes on. (And something that Chess deals with regularly)
The only reason this isn't a major issue yet is that the free software is still pretty weak. But if I was playing in a tournament online for something serious, I'd be very concerned about the usage of computers (especially for endgame).

I'm not sure what's to be done about it (I believe chess servers compare lines of play to those of a selected set of bots), but it's definitely cheating (and ban-worthy on chess servers).

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

I had this same experience playing regularly on DGS for several years. It was a lot of fun in its own right but did not translate to gains in real-time strength.

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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