This may have been asked before but I will ask again anyway.

I've been playing a lot recently on Tygem and Wbaduk and using their in game score estimator. Obviously when using it I'm able to better see what is big and what is not and I've been doing a lot better in end game because of it. What are people's thoughts on using it? Is this going to help my game by allowing me to see big moves which will carry over to my live games, or is this going to become a crutch and really hurt me in the long run? I'm trying not to rely on it, but I have trouble resisting. If this is going to hurt my game I might just have to only play on KGS where I don't get to use it during the game so there is no temptation.

I would gather that whether it "hurts you" or not depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to be able to play well without the score estimator, then it'd be good to practice that goal, it seems.

If your goal is to play as well as you can while having the score estimator at your disposal, I guess you'd might as well use it.

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be immersed

If you decide to stop using it, you probably will fall in strength (at least as your rating is concerned) in the short term. But if you are actively seeking to improve at Go and learn new skills, I would suggest not using it. I think it's kind of like training wheels on a bicycle, except that it takes a lot longer to be able to ride skillfully without (I still can't count perfectly). Another comparison is to using a joseki dictionary during a game - you can do it, and it might make the difference in that particular game, but by not being forced to deal with the situation on your own I think you hinder your long-term development.

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We don't know who we are; we don't know where we are.
Each of us woke up one moment and here we were in the darkness.
We're nameless things with no memory; no knowledge of what went before,
No understanding of what is now, no knowledge of what will be.

How are you using it? Do you try a move out and see what it says?

I wonder about the confidence that it will hurt. Imagine that you have a stronger player looking over your shoulder. Every so often, he says "there's a tesuji here." You look for awhile, and if you don't find it, he shows you. Would that hurt your play? It could become a crutch, but it could also improve your intuition. Isn't doing problems in a book a case where you have the stronger player saying "there's a tesuji here"? For that reason, I can see it either way.

All I can say for sure is that based on what little I know about learning, you should never look at the answer/score estimator before you try and think through the situation on your own. Attempting things on your own makes the eventual solution "stick" better.

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Occupy Babel!

I have trouble believing that a score estimator would do a better job than a 6 kyu. At the same time, I doubt if it is much worse, either. So it could help.

Honinbo Jowa recommended estimating the score at move 30, move 50, and move 100 (approximately, of course). You might try making estimates at those times, and then comparing your estimates with those of the server. Find out where and why it goes wrong.

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The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

I don't think it'll hurt, but I don't think anything good will come from it, such as improvement. I'm around your strength and can accurately judge whether or not I'm behind to about 15 points if I want to. I think that counting for yourself will assist you in actually LOOKING at all of the moves you have played, instead of just looking at a picture with it laid out for you. Laziness is just laziness, no offense.

Thanks for the replies. I've continued to play with the score estimator on Tygem, and also have been playing many games on KGS. I feel like my game has improved in the last week or two, although I doubt the score estimator has much to do with it, but who knows...

counting is a skill you must practice to be good at.
estimator is not only unreliable but also limit your chance to practice counting.
i think it is an unnecessary function that only hurt your game.

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"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

Use the score estimator!

If you do a lot better with it, this should teach you how important counting is. After acknowledging this, start counting in your live and your KGS games. So, after practising counting for a while you may want to test your counting against the score estimator. After a while your counting will be better, then you should stick with it.

Call me old fashioned (since I have less experience with any of this that anyone who has posted so far) but does anybody feel that it verges on unethical to use the estimator during a match? to me, my gut reaction is that using anything other than your wits during a match is not true to the idea of the game.

now, that being said, i have heard (alright, saw it on hng) that some would even use joseki dictionaries during matches. and one could say that using the score estimator is no different than looking at the scoreboard while playing a basketball game.

all in all, i dont have a real problem with it, but i prefer to count on my own and hone that skill.