yes after the game now and with your hindsight advice, i see what i did wrong its during the game-- i wish i could see which is my territory and which is theirs before hand - i have used the button to the right hand side to see the winrate etc but that i think is not very accurate or at least shows you a differrent prespective
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Stop relying on that win rate. You not have to build an area, but you also have to defend it from invasions.
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It might look like Black is winning, white can always invade and try to successfully live (with two eyes).
Others have done a great job at writing about these basics of defending. Please go through their write-ups.
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Go is a gangster game.
Picture yourself as Al Capone and try to place your men in such a way to control as much territory as you can: sparse but not too tight and not too lose… always ready to fight (that is, trying to capture by surrounding) if your opponent tries to seize territory where your men already are.
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Also, you keep running into a Goldilocks kind of problem
TOO SLOW - if you try to enclose parts of the board by making one eye at at time with four stones, then you allow your opponent to grab most of the rest of the board, and that makes it much harder for you to invade those areas and make living groups
TOO FAST - if you space your stones too far apart (i.e. more than 3 spaces apart) then your stones can’t make a base, and it’s too easy for your opponent to attack your stones and perhaps capture some of them, further reducing what areas you can claim
a large part of the game is figuring out what is JUST RIGHT - how to claim and enclose parts of the board in a way that your stones are just far apart enough to claim some edge potential and make a base (usually one or two spaces between stones) but not so far apart that your opponent can separate you or invade your potential
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just right is guess is the key answer and there in lies the problem seeing what is just right but i do see the idea of three spaces apart max for each stone - my main problem is iam always defending my stones against my opponent’s attacks
If the opponents are making moves that demand immediate reactions, they have the sente.
Sooner or later they will make a move where you get enough room to not be worried. Then you can decide to play anywhere you like.
Another reason why you might be feeling that you’re always the one answering, is that you played too close to their strong position.
Yes that’s key:
You have to play the biggest on the board. If the attack is smaller as somewhere else, move to that place.
Good Morning @NEWOLDGUY I’ve looked at a couple of your games an including the one we’ve played (below). Now I’m a newb too so maybe not in the position to give the best advice. But you seem to always want to build walls of attached stones. That’s considered “slow” development in GO terms. You might want to place stones a bit further apart and in shapes that are considered “connected” not “attached”. Meaning a shape where the stones can’t be easily split apart. Take Kosumi as an example Kosumi at Sensei’s Library. That’s a good start. I suggest you look through these shapes Shapes and Connections at Sensei’s Library and even Six good and six bad shapes at Sensei’s Library. You want to take up as much space as you can and there are shapes here that can help you do that safely and much faster than the lines/walls you are building. Also, Go for me isn’t about carving out a territory right from that start. its about placing stones around the board to gain influence but doing it in a way that they hopefully won’t get killed.
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That’s what i thought i was doing, playing a square shape or diamond shape at the beginning, but i finding it just leads to the other player getting an advantage over what iam doing and counterstrikes me almost every time - so I will abandon that thinking and go back to following my opponent’s moves closely shadowing him/her till i see what they are doing
@NEWOLDGUY You’ve gotten plenty of sound guidance from others with far more experience (and as a noob myself, even I’ve offered some) but having seen several of your games you posted, I’m left wondering…
Have you ever danced with another person?
Of course, when you dance alone you can move around however you wish.
But when you dance with another person, there is both give and take. Otherwise, the moves won’t be worth anyone’s effort - neither yours nor theirs.
Hope you start enjoying this game more as you continue to learn. 
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Hello @NEWOLDGUY Its not shape as some giant structure across the board. Shapes are say 2, 3 or 4 stone configurations that each work in certain situations. In the game you and I played your first 5 moves we’re attachment moves facing the center of the board. Again I’m no expert but the golden Go rule is control the Corners→ Sides→ Center in that order and your “shadowing” strategy wasn’t doing that. That being said its very creative of you to be forging your own path in GO. Maybe it will pay dividends in the future.
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Love the analogy.. but I see it as one of those “west side story” dances when they are both holding a knife in their free hand 
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Love this even more. One false move… 
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week four is about halfway over and I still haven’t won a game, but that’s ok, i guess my latest thing with openings and trying to build snakes top to bottom fast is going about as can be expected at least against 24k players its does give them thought to stop i notice when i get going with that they pause more between moves, than when i make the square or diamond opening moves and the game seems to go a little more longer in moves also ,so thats a good thing, i suppose. reading as much as i can about playing, but really i have to keep it simple as iam an uneducated old guy and too much info sometimes overloads me and confuses me, so I’m going to go slow and keep my head to the ground for now. also less crybaby stuff from me after reading my last 14 posts i was wihining to much about this and that not enough asking real questions of the experts here
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I’m (still) no expert, but FWIW I didn’t take your posts as whining. Just expressing your genuine frustrations.
I hope you’re having more fun and enjoyment and less frustration as you enter your 4th week.
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WRONG.
You DID actually win that last game against me, except that you resigned it when you simply should have played on and maybe have waited for MY resignation.
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i couldn’t tell but i think i was beaten up pretty badly by you so i resigned not to waste your time
another day has pasted and played a handful of games, still no insight in having a game plan to start say the first 15 moves but will keep experimenting. the square diamond thing start is definitely out. but blocking my opponent’s moves is starting to show something, but only up to about move 15 then what ever superior thinking on the part of my opponent takes over. and its down hill from there well i keep trying
He’s reading the in game score estimator and assuming that it’s a win percentage.
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