Do you find that most of your games are decided by the life or death of one large group?

I find this to be the case in the majority of my games.

Any thoughts on what this means?

What's your sample size? If you play 500 more games, this "majority" may change.

I remember feeling like all my games were decided by one large group.

Recently when I play I feel like all my games are lost by one or two moves that just force me to accept a bad situation or allow an opponent an overwhelming hane or an extra move that fully commits me to an invasion.

It kind of depends, your group or your opponents, or either. If its your groups you probably play lightly and greedily and your opponent has to call you on it. If it is your opponents groups you probably like to play aggressively and or don't take enough territory.

Honestly, this is often a choice both players make (whether they are conscious of it or not).

I had a game like this where I decided to make the whole game about the life and death of one group. It was a handicap game and I was facing an 80 point reverse komi. I took about 75% of the board and basically what I was saying was: "Come, try to make a group live in here or just give up and let me win!" My opponent tried to make a group live it became a massive board-consuming fight that, in the end, my opponent won. I lost that game by around 35 points (when you include the reverse komi).

Whenever you or your opponent commits to making a group live and the other player commits to killing it outright this can happen and that is very common in kyu games because players are insistent on making the life or death of a group all that matters in a fight (instead of settling for letting the opponent live small in exchange for outside influence.

As you can see from that example, my opponent living was not game-losing for me if I didn't have a huge handicap I was facing. I would have let him live in the center in exchange for tons of influence that would guarantee me points on the rest of board, but I needed a ton of points. I almost was able to still win, but he made two plays that cost me those points. 1 was making a kill seki and the other was sealing off the left side of the board in gote (a wise move when he was so far ahead from the komi).

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

I believe that many (maybe even most) games up to 1D KGS should be decided this way. Weak players are just so negligent at defense or reckless at invading that proper exploitation should result in a corpse.

Go is a fighting game, not one of tidy territories. Learning to kill/punish is an essential skill.

That said, I'd guess only 25% for me.

_________________
- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

It's not so hard to kill a big group as it is hard to live during that killing

If the life and death that decides the game is usually one of your groups, then I'd suggest that maybe you need to make moves that make your groups safer. Getting into the center, connecting with another group or making eyes.

It's really hard to attack anything on the board or get into fights if you have a group (or worse... groups) that you still have to worry about. As you've probably experienced, when you are struggling to make a group live your opponent gets to make moves that not only attack you, but are useful for other purposes, while your moves are often just aiming at the sole purpose of giving you life. Even if you do eventually make a group live, you've only achieved that sole purpose, while your opponent can turn around and use all the stones he put down while attacking you to do something else. If you take time earlier to make a group safe, then your opponent can't get free moves while attacking you. The hard part is figuring out when your group needs to be safer and when it's okay as it is. And that can change at any time, often through moves that are played in some other area of the board.

There is a saying that large groups never die. It could be that you need more work on life and death. Another possibility is that you are failing to sacrifice some stones in order to save others; you do not give up the tail to save the body. Another possibility is that you do not understand shape; you make heavy groups that are difficult to save but too large to sacrifice. Another possibility is that you are overconfident or greedy; instead of securing your large group you invade or overextend yourself, grasping for too much and allowing your opponent to counterattack.

It would help to see a game or two.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

This is advice I really don't like to see. You need to read if the group needs to be safer and what forcing moves are given to an opponent. If you make a safe group safer, you will fall behind moves in a game.

May I recommend for your consideration B108 , the last move in this game?



Played by Fujisawa Hideyuki (AKA Shuko) when he was six.

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

Visualize whirled peas.

Everything with love. Stay safe.

Take a look at this video by Shawn Ray (3 dan) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQKPnK3Jaio - he says that it is better to make a move that makes your group safe than to just play a big move and let your opponent attack it in sente (even if it doesn't really need another move to live).

At our level (SDK) it is probably better to fix a weak group in gote and then never have to worry about it again than to go about playing and not come back to the group until it is too late to save it. Falling a move behind is huge in a professional or dan evel game, but with the amount of mistakes kyus make one move won't really matter and letting a big group die should not be one of those mistakes.

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

How do you plan to be dan-level if you don't make dan level moves?

Playing a slack move so you don't have to worry is great if you want to stay at SDK. It will work many times to get you wins, but it won't get you over the hurdle of having to read and decide if you need an extra safe move.

I like the example, since that doesn't look like a safe group to me.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't read, but I am saying that a lot of kyu players look at a group and say: "That looks safe, I don't see any way my opponent can kill it in one move" and then they forget about it. "Can't kill in one move" is not the same as "safe" because an opponent that knows how to attack will gain a lot of profit by not killing your group.

My point is that you shouldn't be afraid of gote moves. Thinking: "This move means my group is no longer weak, but it's gote so I'd better play somewhere else" is the wrong idea. It is generally better to fix yourself before you try to attack your opponent. A lot of kyu players will leave weak groups everywhere refusing to give up sente to fix them until finally their opponent does get sente and attacks everything.

One of my games illustrates this:



At move 76 I made a gote move to strengthen my group on the bottom because it had no base. Did I "need" to do it? No. I had a stone that was leading it out toward the center. They weren't in danger of dying. But why give black free moves against my group? Why not make a base, make some points, and then get to focus on attacking black's weak groups?

Black could have then used move 77 to fix his group in the middle, but because he continued to press, I eventually got a chance to kill his group.

At the time his group was made it was fine like that. Yeah, it had some cutting points, but they didn't really work. However, I had built up thickness toward the center and, by the time we were done attacking each other in the middle I was able to play move 92 and kill his group, winning me the game.

_________________
"You have to walk before you can run. Black 1 was a walking move.
I blushed inwardly to recall the ignorant thoughts that had gone through
my mind before, when I had not realized the true worth of Black 1."
-Kageyama Toshiro on proper moves

I think this is plain wrong. (Kind of depends on your definition of "safe", though.) "Being safe" is obviously a very dynamic concept.
You don't just want to live with 2 eyes, you want to make territory, or maybe attack, or reduce with your groups.

Just look at a lot of simple josekis. Standard 3-3 invasion under hoshi pushes from behind on the second line twice. Why? Because we don't want our opponent turning to be sente against our corner.

Or the 3-4 high approach, attach under, hane, pull back, connect, protect with a one space jump (I hope people get which joseki I mean). The one space jump is totally not needed in terms of "safety", but it'll be horrible to allow our opponent to press us down to the second line while he'll get influence.


Or 3-3 invasion under hoshi after being pincered. It ends up with the invader jumping out. Why? Because we're not stupid and don't want to be confined. We're totally alive without that jump, but our opponent would get to surround us in sente (!) and gain a superior position if we didn't jump out.


There are times when we need to leave shaky groups and take some big point, mostly when we're behind on points and said group does nothing but reduce by virtue of being somehow alive anyway.
But saying "defending" equals slack play sounds like bad advice, imho.

Ok, I think I'll stop here, since no one is reading the original post.

I said earlier that you have to read what forcing moves are given to the opponent in a position you play away from. Defending for the sake of only defending is generally not going to help and is not something I would advise to players.

Your original post was responding to someone saying in a nutshell "if your groups keep dying maybe you should spent a gote move once in a while defending them".
If you say one should even secure groups to the point of the opponent not having any forcing moves (which you didn't, btw. Still your definition of "safety" is lacking) then I don't understand your problem with Thunkd's original advice.

It goes further than that. I was a lecture and a 3-dan showed his game to pro. It was just in the opening and the 3-dan played a wedge into the opponent's side rather than approach a 3-4 point.

The pro stopped him there and asked how strong he was and he said 3-dan. Then the pro said, "this is a good move if you want to be 3-dan the rest of your life." Then he mentioned he know one pro who liked to do that wedge, just to point out that it's wasn't necessarily bad in terms of winning or losing, but he still insisted that it wasn't the kind of thing you start with if you want to get stronger.

I can see both sides of this. I don't think it's necessary to always play the 100% most severe move. At the same time, slackness can be a hard habit to shake because it is self-punishing and the consequences are much more subtle. Overplay at least sometimes gets punished in a clear way so you can learn.

Uh, is not pure gote. See that enclosure black probably thinks is territory?