How is the graphic of the board oriented in my opponent's display? Does this make a difference betweeen OTB and online play?

Does my opponent see the board flipped 180 degrees in OGS, or do we both see the same graphic of the goban? Thanks

The latter.

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Yeah, you both (and spectators) see the same orientation so that you can discuss coordinates.

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Yet another difference between online and IRL. I wonder what difference this makes cognitively to game play?

Interesting thought. Initially I wanted to discard it quickly. But who knows? Maybe we are biased to think that the bottom half of the board ā€˜belongsā€™ to us. In which case there might be a measurable difference between OTB and online games statistically.

I think the flow and the overall shapes on the board will be different.

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Well the one thing that comes to mind is the ā€œpoliteā€ move being upper right corner. :smiley: It of course makes little sense online (but itā€™s still tradition), but since I play mostly online rather than in real life, now it looks weird to me when I am white OTB. Suddenly the game starts elsewhere.

But other than that I kind of doubt there is any measurable difference. We just react to shapes and are used to flipping them. What does it matter that our opponent sees them from the other sideā€¦

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Although it would probably be trivial to flip the coordinates alongside the board position.

Actual coordinates would be easy, the problem is we usually tend to say ā€œupper left, lower rightā€ etc. :slight_smile:

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True :slight_smile:

when i play my first IRL game ill get bacm to you. and or flip your phone?

The only difference i can personally contrive from online vs IRL playing is that my resding and general game play is about a stone weaker. I donā€™t think there is an inherent difference personally in the psychollogy of the game itself. As when i play black its always the upper right for me. And when i play white it always tends to be the lower left. Depending on the direction of the oponant, dictates to me what chunk of the board i want to be mine and what part of the board rhey want. This changes game to game. And seeing as ive beckne a greedy player in the last few monthsā€¦ i want everything on the board. So it does not matter.

Well, at least on my screen the board is 20.5cm x 20.5cm, whereas a real board is over four times that size (~42cm x 45cm), so the most striking difference lies in the degree of overview. Itā€™s much easier (for me) to assess the global state of the board when it occupies less space in my visual field.

The focus field of the eye is quite narrow as it is (focus a word in this text and see for yourself where the words around it start to blur, this is only counteracted by our eyesā€™ clever use of saccades) so if you want to analyze a more space-consuming sequence, your focus shifts farther away, so it also becomes harder to keep track of said sequences.

The orientation OP mentions is helpful for online use because itā€™s way easier to communicate which coordinates are referred to when you say (A4). The opposite approach (flipping to simulate OTB board states) annoys the hell out of me when playing chess online or trying to figure out someoneā€™s recorded sequence.

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I hadnt considered that. Something to experiment on for myself. Thank you for that insight .

chess prgrammes turn the board around. the whiteblack pieces start out close to the whiteblack player, who instead has to swap the cordinates for formal move description (from whitesblacks view A1 is in the top right corner). i suppose it makes that much more sense in chess, where there is a preset direction of movement (forward).
in go the difference doesnt strike me as that big of a deal, but who knows.

the only time ive experienced a little confusion was after an irl game i played with a friend, while another friend fed the game to lizzie. me and my opponent ofc sat across from each other, while our recorder sat at 90Ā° to both of us and saw the board sideways :smiley:. when we then looked at the screen it took a little time to adjust to the different point of view, but after a couple of minutes it was fine.

EDIT: oopsā€¦ ofc white goes first in chess :roll_eyes:

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For this reason, I was surprised to find that I actually find it easier to assess a game on my phone than on my computer.

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The widely used convention for recording IRL games into a computer format is to show the board from blackā€™s viewing perspective.

This can be seen in recordings of professional games (see http://gokifu.com/ for example), where black consistently makes the first move in the ā€œtop-rightā€, which is also following this tradition https://senseis.xmp.net/?PlayingTheFirstMoveInTheUpperRightCorner.

Further discussion: https://senseis.xmp.net/?PlayingTheFirstMoveInTheUpperRightCorner%2FDiscussion

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Sure! Well, this one wasnt :yum:.

Thatā€™s inherently a ting.

At least with chess A1 is always whiteā€™s queen rook on a dark squareā€¦ thatā€™s a level of consistency Go/Weiqi/Igo/Baduk can only dream of, as you pointed out recently in another thread :stuck_out_tongue:

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