You Know You Are Addicted To Online Go When You
- Sometimes dream of other online go players.
- Waste a beautiful day to play go on KGS
- Sleep at 8 pm and wake up at 4 am (when the European players are actively playing)
- Spend more time chatting than playing
- Log onto KGS first thing in the morning
- Consider many of the fellow online players "friends" and even invite them to your city
- Forget to eat meals - just being on KGS or Aurora satiates your hunger
- Are willing to learn new languages to facilitate communication on foreign servers
- Debate whether to attend the go meetings each week or just play on KGS
- Devote almost half a year's worth of weekends to play in the PGA IC
- Actually find the server a little lonely when your friends are not on
- Play simultaneous games on different servers
- Learned about Princess Diana, the Space Shuttle accident and the capture of Saddam Hussein in a go server chat
- Contemplate not taking your vacation because you can't get to your server while away
- Think of playing regularly on a go server as a fulfilling social life. Tamsin
- Take the next day off from work or school because you watch every live pro tourny game the night before (for those of us 10+ hours behind Japan). Malweth
- Take the next day off from work or school just because you were PLAYING go all night! Malweth
- Refer to printed kifu as "SGFs." Rubyflame
- Feel depressed because The Captain isn't playing. GilbertLB
- Cannot correctly hold a go stone -- and you're a 9 dan! gtwade
- Get to play on a real goban for the first time, and you think "Great, how do I log on?" gtwade
- Start nit-picking on SL humour pages about online go.^^
- Find this page to be funny.
- There are fingerprints all over your monitor, because you touch the screen where you might want to place a stone; before you actually place it...just to see what it might be like. Bellicose took me a while to figure out that i was the culprit always dirtying up the screen
- Get very frustrated when someone is trying to talk to you during the game. Sai1029
- try to click a goban
The following lines may also apply to Go in general
- Ignore phone calls during a game
- Contemplate (even briefly) spending $800 on a plane ticket for a tournament overseas (to meet go players you met online, of course)
- Apply Go principles to real life
- No longer read books, study, or watch TV
- Except joseki books, tsumego, Hikaru, or the Go channel.
- See the clue "clever device" in a quick crossword and think "ah, tesuji" before realising it's not a Go-related crossword. JennyRadcliffe
- Think the main point of going to Japan on holiday is to play in Hikaru no go-style go salons. Tamsin, again.
- While drifting off to sleep, staring idly at your curtains and thinking "white could capture red, there, and have two eyes", before realising it's a bouquet of flowers ... Jenny Radcliffe
- Look to the last two free seats at the airport waiting room and think: "Ah! Miai!"
- Accidentally feel something with Braille on, feel, say, the letter "d" and think "Ah! An empty triangle!!" JennyRadcliffe
- Punch someone, they block... and you're satisfied because you kept sente.
- If 3 people hug you, you suddenly urge to run away.
Taken from Halfling's profile
Rich: ... read point two and think "waste?"
Nacho: Maybe point two should read "Turn a day into a beautiful one by playing go all day long"
Alex Weldon: I know it's against the spirit of humour pages to nitpick, but some of these look more like "addicted to Go in general" rather than online Go specifically. For instance, the 800$ plane ticket. Perhaps this should be two pages?
Jenny Radcliffe: I think you're right. Go on, someone more experienced than me, change it! My latest sign of addiction is definitely go-in-general rather than online-go!.
rubilia: Do you really think that nowadays there still can be something like an addiction to offline go in the world? I think it's rather hard to become addicted by games with real-life people only. Maybe we should move the whole page to You Know You Are Addicted To Go When You to cover those rare cases too, but I think the vast majority of obsessive go players can't resist to play online.
Alex Weldon: Take one peek into a Korean or Japanese go parlor (maybe two peeks, so you notice that it's still the same people there eight hours later) and you'll know that the above statement is untrue. :-)
bobulatorm: "apply Go principles to real life" - this isn't really that bad... is it? i find a lot of japanese philosophies/lifestyles have deeper reaching consequences - shouldn't go too? or do i really need help?
naruto3: I am one of those addicted to go and when my computer started failing to connect to KGS i was so depressed i stayed up 24-7 cause i sat in the corner of my room playing myself on a goban depressing
Celila: Everybody says I'm addicted to online Go or KGS in particular. And I think, they are right. For two weeks I've been trying to adjust my biological rhythm - I mainly stay awake all night and sleep some hours during the day. But I haven't managed to go to bed at an decent hour yet ... perhaps today ;)
Rutabaga: I think Robert Frost must've been a Go player. His most well-known poem, The Road Not Taken, is about how one small choice can change everything. In Go, one well- or misplaced stone can easily change the outcome of the game. See why I like Frost? I spent ten minutes trying to explain this to a Japanese player once, but my dictionary is abridged.
Someone should make an 'addicted to Rengo' list. Not that I'm addicted, it's sometimes just stress-relieving to blame losing on someone else. ^^-Draise