not sure if this qualifies as cheating, but its much easier for me to play online if i have an actual board in front of me. i played two games today doing just that, and won the first by land slide, and nearly won the second against a 4 kyu, but had to stop doing board play as it was taking too long for me to keep up and was nearly out of time, and ended up making a mistake that cost me the game.
anyone else do this?

For all my serious rated online games,
I use a slow time setting, and I relay all the moves on a real set.
Been doing it almost 10 years. I play on the real set exactly the same way as any in person face to face game, US Open, etc.

It's rare, but it's happened:
I had already played my intended move on the real set,
then I misclicked on the computer.
Or, I read on the real set, I played my intended move on the real set,
then when I relayed it to the computer, something seemed off --
then I realized earlier (10-20 moves ago),
I had relayed my opponent's move wrong.
So I was reading the wrong board for 10-20 moves.

I enjoy my real sets and it's great to use them regularly like this.
For un-rated, casual online games, I mostly just use the computer.

Eventually, when you sit down face to face in a serious tourney (US Open, London Open, EGF Open, etc.), that's your tourney level.

It's not cheating, your just using a real set. Now if you play out stones in variation, that's cheating.

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We play because we enjoy the beauty of the game, the snap and feel of real stones, and meeting interesting people. Hope to see ya there! お願いします!

Anthony

You just have to play on Wbaduk with pre-play enabled, then it should be ok.

I tried this dual playing myself but found it rather time consuming and distracting. At the moment when you "click" on the real board with your finger and wonder why nothing happens, it's time to realize that something went sub-optimal...

I wonder if such behaviour would be considered cheating in Internet tournaments such as the Pandanet Go European Team Championship.



Certainly it would be if you give in to the temptation to try out variations, but even if you don't do that being able to see your move on the board (in a stronger way than the cursor ghosting online) and then realise it is a mistake and play something different online would also be cheating to me. Ed, can you honestly say you have never done that on KGS?

Of course you should first play your move online, only then lay it onto the board.
In generic form: you should never lay a stone on the board which wasn't played in the online game.
All the rest would be mild to strong forms of cheating.

I used to do that when I was first learning how to play. Did that with my games on IGS because I didn't have anyone around me to actually play with and wanted to get used to playing on a real board. The perspective difference can throw off your eye if you're not used to it.

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If Go is too complicated, you're probably forgetting the basics.

I found this a non-issue, but I was thrown off by the fact that my goban doesn't change its markings to indicate a ko.