Today really frustrating to play of course lost all my games, that is a given, but i seem to be playing worse, rather than better even with a few teaching games where other helped me see what iam doing wrong, their help seemed to make things seem even more complicated than before - and with useless teaching aids on this and many other sites i don’t see a path to get better of course when i started chess i was this bad at first but at least they had courses to learn to play better and strategies that get you even with people who at the same level here any 25 k i play iam light years behind them in thinking and processing each move - trying 3 day game and up to see if i can improve but so far each 25 k i play has me all firgured out before my first move – and by the way what is the best first move noone says that in chess its king pawn forward thats the opening - what is the first move in go anyone help ??? soory about the bitching but my meds are kicking in and its time i should quit
I feel sorry for that. Maybe would be easier meeting a player in real life instead of online? Anyway thanks for your involvement and I do hope you ll come back to it some time.
Enjoy your life
It’s definitely frustrating when you are new and learning, but I really suggest being patient with yourself.
Try to watch some games on Twitch, there are plenty of people over there like BattsGo who dedicate their time to teaching and answering questions.
Watch lessons on YouTube, there are countless resources available there.
Look up joseki, tsumego, and proverbs.
Most importantly, just have fun! 
Hope it gets better for you, best of luck.
AFAIK OGS doesn’t go below 25k. Players that should be 30k are called 25k too here. That hides any progress you make until you reach 24k and it might give the impression to a new player that they should be able to beat other 25k, which is not true.
If you’re below 25k it’s generally displayed as 25k. However, if you look at the table of games on a player’s profile page it will display ranks below 25k.
@NEWOLDGUY If you should still be around, have a look at this site that helps you learn some easy tactics: https://www.learn-go.net/
Short answer - if you’re playing 13x13 or 19x19, the most effective opening move is often the 4-4 point or the 3-4 point of any corner.
If you’re playing 9x9, that gets a bit more tricky because the usual corner > sides > middle efficiency priorities of bigger boards are eclipsed by the “knife fight in a broom closet” dynamic of playing on a smaller board. The best opening move on a 9x9 is often determined by your play style - i.e. whether you’re trying to carve out your part of the board in a relatively peaceful game, or if you’re planning on trying to capture and kill most of your opponent’s stones…
If you are not having fun with the game, then there is no reason to pressure yourself to do so.
Be well and enjoy life 
Are your medicines perhaps interfering with your capability to play go?
For example do they influence your concentration span? Or are they somehow sedative?
Does your medicine carry a prescription that it may influence your performance in some way?
Dutch example of warning on medicine
@NewOldGuy, I feel your pain though perhaps I’m not dealing with the same level of frustration. As a newbie myself and past the stage of learning the rules I’m finding it hard to get the right learning resource for my level. Puzzles are great but what I’m missing is more in-depth lessons on Shapes and how to approach/attack and to recognise an attack and defend. There are alot of creators on youtube but the content feels either level 1 basic or too advanced.
@NEWOLDGUY hi, try this approach for a first time :
at beginning, put one stone at 2 corners (3-4)
then give them a base (a shimari)
then expand to the sides (put one stone in the 3rd line)
if the stone put a the side is “isolated”, give it a base (2 space extension) on the 3rd line
then you will starting adding more stones on 4th, 5th, … lines until the center.
Just make sure that your groups don’t die when under attack.
Don’t add stones to your groups that are alive.
The difficulties often encountered by newbies are :
Recognized group status (dead or alive)
Expanding faster (often newbies are doing nobi or tobi instead of just playing elsewhere where there is space
That’s good Advice @Nobi-Kun thanks. If I want to attack a stone, why do I place a stone one space away instead of attaching directly?
When this happens, when I lose a bunch of live games in a row, its a cue for me to take a break. You know, like “to get my rhythm back”. I go back to doing tsumegos and return back the next day.
attaching is for defense at start.
so to capture a group, you start by surround it.
for that you need tobi or keima.
Once surrounded you can attach.
if you attach without surrounding the group first, your opponent will probably nobi to try to escape. Then he will acquire some more space and your attack will fail. Eventually you will acquire a wall but probably also weaknesses
Thanks, very kind of you
It takes 3 moves to put a stone in atari and then your opponent escapes and with a move only, get his group to have 3 liberties. To defend is indeed easier as to attack and it need more subtility to attack as making a contact move.
Contact move are more defensive as attacking btw. Contact is more helping stones to be alive (for you and your opponent) as a threat to capture something.
That last post was a ear full ,so 3 moves to lose a stone, to defend is easier than attacking and contact with other stones is a no no or is it not a no-no?
I’m going to try to answer as succinctly as I can
I would argue that - in many situations where your opponent’s stones are outnumbering yours on the board, and especially if your stone is near the edge - once you lose 2 liberties, chances are you have little chance of making life there - I made up an example below and showed you how that particular group might run out of room to make eyes, etc
If there were no Black stones to the left, the White stone could still run, but because those Black stones are in the way, if it tries, it will run out of room before it can make life
Rather than thinking of it as “defending vs attacking” think of it as having many different options for trying to get points (in order of skill and complexity)
- grabbing freely available parts of the board before your opponent does, in order of relative value
- grabbing those parts of the board that your opponent most wants, rather than those easiest for you to reach
- keeping your opponent from grabbing large parts of the board, and only letting them have small ones
- capturing all of your opponent’s stones and keeping them from making any territory
So there is a huge gradient of complexity depending on whether your trying to play a relatively peaceful game (where both opponents try to play for land grabs, and no one’s groups get captured) or a more fight-heavy game where there might be lots of captures. It’s not that one’s somehow “better” than another. There is a broad variety of play styles and strategies to choose from. Having said that - I think it would be nearly impossible to win a high-level game of Go playing ONLY defensive moves.
There is a particular Go proverb which says “don’t touch weak stones”
The logical reason for this is - you played the 1st move to attach, and both stones lost 1 liberty. However, when your opponent makes their next move, they take away your 2nd liberty, so they’ll always be one liberty ahead in any capturing race between those 2 stones
However, that’s only a small part of the story.
Basically, there are many reasons why you might play stones on the board and NOT attach them to opponent stones
- to approach a part of a board and claim part of it as yours (one lone stone)
- to reinforce a single stone and make a base / create a group
- to reinforce a group and create potential in that part of the board
- to approach / threaten an opponent’s group
- to expand your potential away from the edge into the middle
- to have your stones travel across the board in way that benefits your direction of play or makes contact with other isolated stones or groups in other parts of the board
- etc. etc. etc
Not attaching allows you to DO THINGS and move around the board in a way that benefits you and threatens your opponent without directly starting a fight
There are also many reasons why you might choose to attach or touch stones
- to attack that particular stone and try to capture it
- to threaten your opponent’s group with forcing moves because you want to create direction of play that’s beneficial for you
- to create a future cut point that will allow you to threaten your opponent down the road
- to threaten or remove future eye space in case your opponent tries to live small
- etc. etc. etc
Once you attach, you indicate to your opponent that you want to increase the conflict in this part of the board, usually because you have a specific secondary goal
From your questions - it seems like you keep trying to reduce this game to a set of formulas. If I just do X, then Y, then Z, then this should work right?
But in this game context is everything. Even a perfectly valid and extremely cool gambit (like the Flower Joseki) can work great in some contexts, and worse in others.
Think of it as taking the time to tell yourself a long, detailed story about all the things that changed because of the last move. Once you go through your lengthy checklist where you’ve described how all the various risks and opportunities just changed, you then decide which holds the best option for profit, or creates the greatest risk if left ignored.
Your input from this last post was quite elegant and was really well written i got some of the concepts, but others just went over my head even after multi readings. iam not a smart old guy iam a simple old man trying to get this game before i have to give up in frustration - i will try to apply what i got out of your post i thank you for taking the time to write this post and maybe others reading it smarter fellows, will get more out of it – trying to find more players to play three day games with that will help me, while we play with advice or at least some banter between moves –
I see that you mostly play 9x9 (which is less forgiving of mistakes than bigger boards). I suggest you take a look at this book called “81 Little Lions”, written by a feloow forum user. Here’s the link: 81 Little Lions: An Introduction to the 9x9 Board for Advanced Beginners, by Immanuel Devillers — Revised Edition (2019)
Also, if the ranking is a worry, then play unranked games (you can also do this against bots).
Also, a question, are you solving Tsumegos daily?