I wonder if anyone else has noticed this curious phenomenon when they play against the ai. As a newbie I want to take my time and study the position and try to look for the best play I can think of trying to look for shapes and connections I see in tutorial videos etc. But, no matter how hard I try, I get sucked into playing faster and faster until I am not thinking at all. Most times I hardly notice the mistakes I am making as the ai plays and my stones disappear like magic!! Just curious if this happens to anyone else and if so what they do to combat it!
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A common thing, not only AI but all online Go.
A very common recommendation is “take your hand off the mouse till you’ve decided what you are going to play”.
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Hi - thanks for the suggestion - I try to sit on my hands as much as I can but maybe I am just weak willed 
plus at my age I seem to need far longer than the average newbie just to check for ataris let along start looking for best shapes/connections and as soon as I start getting the countdown 
it is back to me racing the ai 
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good reason not to play bots
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Just play with much more time then 
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I tried extending the times out but the bots I tried seem to have outside time limits - maybe not all of them do - I will try them all 
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Hi–
I believe that you can pause the game & still play, & this will stop the clock from counting down.
That would be ideal - I will try it next time I play - thanks
I presume you simply forget that you mean to take your time (I have the same problem with not picking up a stone until I have chosen my move). Perhaps it would help to play with only byo-yomi, and not move till you have (e.g.) 3 seconds left, and not to touch the mouse before that. You may not want to do it every time, but it might help break the automatism you are dragged into.
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