Life In 19x19

I have been playing most of my games with computers rather than humans (though I hope to change that soon), but I feel as if I have a lot of trouble figuring out how to make eyes or just figure out what points to hit if I want to live in an area. I've studied some life and death problems, but they don't seem to get at my problem. I'm just not sure where to put the stones to start making good shapes and when I can ignore the area I have because I already have life. Most of the beginner life and death problems are when you have almost your entire 2 eyes built up, and they are completely surrounded, not when you're just beginning to try to give shape to 3 or 4 stones. Is this just something that takes more experience or should I be studying something?

I had the same problem at first. Most Go problems are artificial. I want to know more how those shapes developed so that I could learn to plan/prevent them in my games.

It mostly just takes practice and experience.

Otherwise, you really shouldn't worry to much about making eyes. Experienced players make shapes that are large enough to make eyes at any time, so they don't worry about making them too soon. If you try to make eyes for your groups too soon, then your opponent will be making larger moves elsewhere.

Browse through some much more difficult problems. These show you positions that are several moves before the beginner problem positions are reached (so they are more realistic), and which are on the life/death border. You probably won’t be able to solve the problems, but just reviewing them will give you a feeling for when the status of a group is becoming critical, and really needs an urgent move.

Pejogo wrote:I have a lot of trouble figuring out how to make eyes or just figure out what points to hit if I want to live

that takes more experience or...

Hi Pejogo,

All good questions, and common questions for this level.

If you have not finished 100 games yet, I recommend you finish 100 games as quickly as your time allows you to. The board size does not matter so much,
and you can finish more games on smaller boards faster.

After you have finished about 100 games,
then have your games reviewed, either here or on KGS, etc.

Yes, experience is very important at this level.
( It's important at all levels, too, but especially at the beginning.
That's the meaning of the arbitrary milestone of 100 games:
different people will have different experiences from their first 100 games.
Some people can benefit from reviews with much fewer than 100 games;
others may need more. )

How to make life when you do not have a well formed group is an advanced topic. As xed_over indicates a good rule of thumb is to make a group that is so large that life is not a problem. When I was starting out, I learned another good rule of thumb, which was to make one eye and have access to the center. There is no guarantee, OC, that you can make an eye in the center, but it's a good bet.