@ Sprogz:
I am another gaming southpaw. I set up very similar to Sprogz. I mouse with right hand and use inverted T arrow keys for my movements. I’ve been doing this 10 years at least, and it’s very natural.

The isolation from other keys is important because I am not a touch typist and would have to look down to center over WASD if I used them. The arrow keys automatically guide me by their group shape.

I’ve worn out two keyboards this way… for gaming! (The first one, I actually wore a hole through the tops of the keys – s’true! I have a picture!) But wearing out the arrow keys doesn’t mean the keyboard must be trashed, as I can use the alphabetic keys fine… on another computer I don’t game on.

I’m left handed, and I use WASD with my left hand and use the mouse with my right, no problems.

I learned HJKL from playing NetHack (so throw in YUBN diagonals too), so that’s my vote. I’m an Emacs person, though, so I use C-n, C-p, C-f, C-b combos, and their meta counterparts, when text editing.

I’m a leftie through and through. I conditioned myself to use the keyboard and mouse right-handed and that was fine for everyday computing and single player gaming. But I do a fair bit of online multiplayer gaming with COD4 and Crysis Wars. And this is where I was at a disadvantage. Multiplayer success is (amongst other things) about quick reactions, as soon as you see your opponent you have to be fast with aiming and firing, and this is where the right hand set up sucked…for me. Fast reactions and accurate aiming requires most coordinated/dominant hand to be the one controlling the mouse and I was controlling that with my weak right hand. It didn’t help that I’ve broken my right wrist (and only my right never my stronger and more coordinated left) repeatedly from playing rugby. I switched my keyboard/mouse around to a left hand setup (left hand holding the mouse, right button to click and left button to right click). After some practice to get used to the new set up my online gaming performance increased dramatically. I now do all my general computer work and gaming using a left hand setup and see no reason to go back. It feels so natural.

@Alexander -actually, that’s a good idea. I never thought about using ESDF but it does give you more keys for mapping additional functions. I might need to try this out one day.

I use ESDF for gaming which has no option in your poll. :-(

[b]Why ESDF and not WASD?[/b]

Easy: Using ESDF gives you a “circle” of other keys around your movement keys (RTGBVCXYAQW) which can be mapped for direct weapon selection or other actions.

I’m a gamin’ leftie and am driven insane by always having to map the multitude of keys needed by today’s FPS games. Forwards, backwards, left, right, jump, crouch, prone, reload, shoot, change weapons (quickly)…

I have the mouse in my left-hand but don’t re-map the buttons, LMB shoots (clicked with my left-hand middle finger) and RMB is usually zoom (like aiming down a sniper rifle scope, etc) pressed with my index finger.

Typically arrow keys to replace WASD, CTRL to run, shift to crouch. End (directly above up arrow on my keyboard) is USE (for any kind of in-game interaction, open doors, etc). Usually, any keys on the keypad I can reach with my right-hand pinky for switching weapons, flashlights, med-packs, et. al.

Return/enter to jump.

Call of Duty 2 (if I remember correctly) felt best for me as I was able to map changing stance up/down to the mouse wheel. Mouse wheel up went from prone to crouch to stand and mouse wheel down from stand to prone to crouch. It felt very natural.

I’ve tried mousing with my right hand and using WASD – it would sure make getting into a new game that much easier but I am just useless with that configuration.

My brother uses LMB/RMB for forwards/backwards like someone else here. It seems really weird NOT using the mouse to shoot but maybe it’s something else to try.

Gaming – that’s not my stuff. But as for text editing – what’s wrong with ^b ^f ^p and ^n. That was not even an option on the poll.

I suspected that WASD will have a big lead over all the other choices because there are so many gamers out there. There are definitely more gamers out there than people who use HJKL with vi.

I actually expected the HJKL keys to score higher because of the Vi users out there. Still going strong though. I don’t play many games anyway so the keys are used primarily for editing. There is a Firefox plugin for Vim keybindings but I don’t use it. Anyway, in the words of some famous Linux persona, “Give me Vi or give me death.”