On a scale of, say, 0 to 5, tenuki can take any value. Those who "follow the opponent" around must be assuming that it takes values like 2 or below. If it takes the value 4, and the punishing move locally takes the value 5, then at least you are two plays into a different plan. "After every disaster you have sente", a proverb as dubious as most of them. But at least you have morphed the game, and presumably have some aji left. (No aji is a fairly good indicator that you should not play tenuki.)

If what you leave behind is a weak group, this is more like leaving interesting possibilities for the opponent. Not recommended in general. And not to be too solemn about the whole business, it isn't usually necessary to kill all the weak groups if you just want to win ...

I do get concerned that these advice threads become incoherent, what with the introduction of pet theories,

As another take on this, if you are at 12k, there are many different things to work on. Certainly none of your go skills are of professional level. When you are 8k, there will be many different things to work on. Certainly none of your go skills will be professional level, though they may be incrementally better than they were at 12k. There is no barrier in between them. There's no line like "a 9k must be able to read X moves ahead" or anything. Any barrier that's there is in your own mind.

If you are playing a 10k player, they will make numerous mistakes. Their moves are, for the most part, crap. I'm significantly stronger than this, and my moves are still mostly crap moves. There's nothing special about their play. If you want to be an SDK, all you have to do is not play DDK moves.

When you move, think about the move and ask yourself, is this what a 9k player would play? What a 7k player would play? What a stronger player would play? Or is it a DDK move? If it is, what would a stronger player play? Would they let their opponent get away with that? Would they ignore it, because your opponents move is too small?

Don't chicken out. Fight to make your narrative of the game THE narrative of the game, because your opponent's narrative is most likely wrong. Play the move you think a stronger player would play, instead, and see how far it takes you before you decide that there's something fundamentally wrong with your skills.

Or with the introduction of jokes, obvious as they may be to most.

We should have some kind of forum where we can aggregate the advice given and clear it of signature, so that it becomes coherent and supported by a community, rather than a compound of individual contributions of equal weight. Now wait a second ...

The following is a list of books that I've been through:

Go: A Complete Introduction to the Game by Richard Bozulich

Learn to play Go volume II: The way of the Moving Horse by Janice Kim

Double Digit Kyu Games by Neil Moffatt

How Not to Play Go by Yuan Zhou

Mastering the Basics Volume 5: The Basics of Go Strategy by Richard Bozulich

Fundamental Principles of Go by Yilun Yang

38 Basic Josekis by James Davies

In the Beginning by Ikuro Ishigure

Attack and Defense by James Davies

The Direction of Play by Takeo Kajiwara

_________________
Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

Joelnelsonb, see my answer in the appropriate forum:

viewtopic.php?p=190979#p190979

I don't know all of these. It is fairly obvious to me that you should not do much reading in "38 Basic" or the Kajiwara book, until you are about 5 kyu. You should read some of "Tesuji" by Davies in depth, instead.

General philosophy: anyone who is improving quickly can read what they like. Anyone on a plateau needs a special diet to sort out some things that are holding them back, rather than being an omnivore. And actually, much the same goes for taking advice from this sort of forum.

Thank you for the responses. I've just purchased "Tesuji" from Apple Go Books and will look into the other two books recommended by RobertJasiek once I've found a good place to purchase them from. Thanks again!

_________________
Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

You can order straight from Jasiek.

http://home.snafu.de/jasiek/

So tell me what you think: I've decided (among reading more of the proper material for my level and doing more life and death) that I'm going to quit playing DDKs. Even if I never win a game for a long time, I want to always play against better players until I can hang with them. Before, I would set my challenges to be open to anyone a little lower and a little higher than my current rank. This means that if I played poorly for a while and dropped a few kyus, I would adjust the rank restriction accordingly and play weaker players until I got back up. I'm wondering if the community thinks this will be productive or if maybe there's something to be said about playing both stronger and weaker players.

_________________
Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

Just imagine the stronger players also vow never to play DDK.

They don't seem to have a problem with it.

_________________
Thinking like a go player during a game of chess is like bringing a knife to a gun-fight. Thinking like a chess player during a game of go feels like getting knifed while you're holding a gun...

SDKs are not going to pick up bad habits from DDKs.

_________________
The Adkins Principle:
At some point, doesn't thinking have to go on?
— Winona Adkins

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Play stronger players when you can and play equal when you can't.

It's important to play both stronger and weaker players in order to improve. Stronger players are better at punishing your mistakes, but they are better at hiding their weaknesses. Playing weaker players allows you to see their weaknesses very clearly. Try playing strong opponents and then going back to weaker players, you will be surprised at the differences you see. Alternating like this you can build skills into your repertoire and become a better player.

Absolutely essential that everyone does this otherwise no one will improve.

_________________
Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

If you do that on KGS you will eventually get a '~' besides your nickname in the game request window. With a '~' it might get more difficult getting games against stronger players. Also consider, if every player wants to play only stronger players, there won't be any games at all...

That's just a stupid logical fallacy.

It's a logical truth. It might be a practical fallacy.

Could is just be (poorly marked, I know...) irony?

On a more serious note I know some players who play very often stronger players with handycap. In those games they play like around 8k while on tournaments in even games they are rather playing like 10k. Thus, playing only stronger opponents might be too single-sided but I really don't know...