Igowin is bad for your game

In the past I have been able to comfortably beat Igowin at levels up to 4 or 5 dan and occasionally beaten it at professional level. So recently I tried an experiment: play lots and lots of games against it as quickly as possible without thinking. I'm not sure if the results were to be expected or not, but I found myself getting into a rhythm of playing silly moves without thinking and after a while was losing more games on 2 dan than I was winning and even losing occasionally on 1 kyu. When I slowed down I started winning again at 4 and 5 dan.

What conclusions are to be drawn from this? The most obvious one to me is that playing a lot against Igowin is detrimental to your game. I invite discussion on this. Have other people had the same experience? Is the conclusion valid at all levels (I am AGA 5d)?

nachtrabe: Maybe I'm confused, but isn't the obvious conclusion here that playing quickly is bad for your game?

Ah! But the point (which I guess I should have made clear) is that igowin plays so quickly it is very easy to get into that routine yourself

I've recently started go in earnest and I've observed the same thing as possible. You just need to learn an important lesson you can probably carry into almost any turn based strategy game. You don't have to make your moves as fast as your opponent. So while it can be bad for your game, if you learn that lesson I'd say you'd be stronger for it.

Igowin overfit

tapir: The problem is not only playing quickly without thinking, but getting used to Igowins line of play including all its mistakes. A function, a neural network etc. would probably be called overfitted then.

According to Handicap for smaller board sizes, there should be no way to give a human player around 8k (Many Faces of Go is said to be 8k, isn't it?) 5 handicap on 9x9 except by adapting to his mistakes which is detrimental to your play.

kevlarsen: Yes, playing fast is bad. If it was a timed game, you might want to play faster, but igowin has no clock. And yes, a computer opponent playing fast will tend to make a human player play faster. It is better if a computer plays with a delay to replicate human behavior. Other than that, when playing a computer, you just have to get used to it playing super fast and play to the best of your ability (usually slow).