I’ve been playing more OTB recently, and I’ve recently noticed that I play vastly differently online and in real life. In particular, I seem to blunder and missread way more online, and play more aggressively. I always assumed we had slightly different behaviors online and in real life, but it occurred to me I am like 3-4 stones stronger in real life, which is huge.
I was wondering if any of you guys felt the same, and if you had techniques to fix that. For me playing online and placing the stones on a real board at the same time kind of works but its a huuuge pain (:
Broadly speaking, our thought processes are often influenced by our tactile perceptions. And the internet is a place where our best judgment often goes to die … So your experience as described is not too hard to imagine becoming a factor.
Besides playing with a real life set along side, you might explore different screen image design and stone sets. Might affect your perceptions to some extent. Then again, there’s nothing like the feel of stones in your fingers to more fully stimulate the brain.
The thing I know as perturbating me and like realize is how big the stones are online haha.
Like stones on ogs fill completely their space and touch all neighboring stones, and I feel like somehow this makes me evaluate life an death differently to some extent.
Of course this is very minor hahaha but still
I greatly prefer OTB and have played much more OTB than online over the years. I can see the board better OTB. However, the difference is certainly not more than one stone, probably less.
When playing OTB, I generally play without clock or with long time settings (like Fischer 40m+15s), so don’t have time pressure and can take the time to read. No other differences otherwise.
Yeah sometime you instant click and then regret but i tend to avoid doing that. Same I play on a normal computer screen, take my hand off the mouse and except in byoyomi i usually always take a couple seconds to think before I play. I really don’t notice a big difference in the behavior, except worse moves, even sometimes missing ataris which I never do irl ^^’
A couple players I’ve played both and they tend to agree. There even is this guy I can take with 2 stones irl and lost to 6 stones online ^^’’ But that’s really an exception ig, maybe OGS and KGS ranks are much harder than EGF?
Wow four stones is a significant difference! Some ideas:
Take your hand off the mouse until you are ready to move.
Change from “1-click submit” to “click the submit button”
You can use custom stone images to make your stones look smaller
You could play with a real board next to you while you’re on the computer
Just practice. If you’re distracted by minor things like stone size, it’s likely you would benefit from more time in the environment.
It also depends what N is - there can be flukes in either direction. I actually just beat a 3d recently, but that was 1 in thousands of games.
It’s to be expected that rank systems will differ. Idk what the differences are these days, but I think OGS takes steps to make sure these differences aren’t huge.
I tried that a few times but it’s more difficult as it looks. Takes quite a bit of time too, especially against someone who doesn’t put stones on a board himself (maybe like 10 mns more on a whole?)
It’s not something I care to do personally, but if I were in OPs position (performing 4 stones better IRL than at the computer), I think it could be beneficial.
Maybe because OTB you don’t point where you want to play a stone with your finger? Don’t laugh, I see streamers do this all the time with their mouse when reading sequences….
Not so sure, it’s troublesome like when taking note on a kifu. You need to be rigorous, having regular breaks in your thinking process to switch activity. Honestly I don’t like it for myself.
In local clubs people have a tendency to repeat the highest rank they ever achieved, or the highest rank of an opponent they ever beat.
Anyway, it’s fun to play fast and play thoughtlessly. If you take forum advice to seriously and act super-neurotic about every online game you play, you’ll probably enjoy it less, play less, and end up weaker.
As I mentioned in the first message x) It does help to play with a board but its technically a pain, and also kind of breaks the point of playing online ig.
I don’t care so much about like getting better online its more about the personal frustration of feeling weaker in some context
Also just to clarify 4 stones was only once but the difference is for sure bigger than 1 stone. When I said a couple seconds to think I meant I do take my time to think even for obvious moves.
… So your experience as described is not too hard to imagine becoming a factor.
