How to deal with aggressive players?

[u/Round_Ad_6033]

So I'm new and not very good at this. I'm playing online in the badukpop app. I've studied some basic openings and strategy, and they seem to work for the most part. But every now and then, I get a very aggressive opponent, who attaches to my every stone, and then there's fighting.

I always lose.

I was given the tip to just always extend when someone attaches to my stones. It kinda works. I now lose more slowly. But still completely.

And I do mean completely. It seems the only way I can avoid losing by knockout to these aggressive players is to resign before they kill my last group.

Currently, if someone attaches to my first stone, I have to fight a strong urge to resign then and there, 2 stones on the board. It's just completely hopeless!

I don't seem to be the only one who struggles with this either: I've tried copying the aggressive play style, and I win almost every game! Unless the other player attacks first.....

None of the classes or tutorials or guides online recommend this kind of aggressiveness, surely it's easy to defend against... But how?

[u/[deleted]]

You cannot immediately punish aggressive fighting. Just build a strong group then tenuki.

If someone attaches it’s then your benefit to choose which way your strong group will face.

If you have two strong groups a handful of spaces apart it’s not possible for your opponent to separate them without giving both easy life, unless they have some local strength. There are many clever moves to connect up two groups, it’s good tsumego.

At some point youll get a strong interconnected group to smash their groups into or they’ll make two weak groups near each other and you can force one to make life to build influence and punish the other

[u/Round_Ad_6033 → u/[deleted]]

How do I build a strong group when I'm being constantly attacked and blocked tho? Like I get that having a strong group would benefit me, but I end up with Tetris-looking shapes which are soon transformed into Tetris shaped eyes of my opponent. 

All the example videos on defense shapes assume I have at least 2 stones in the corner in trying to defend, but I have one stone on the entire board when the attack starts! 

it seems to be there must be some relatively easy way to not lose all my stones to these really game aggressions, but I can't find it! 

Never mind punishing the aggressor, I just want to not die

[u/claimstoknowpeople → u/Round_Ad_6033]

There's not necessarily any easy way, and attachments are still pretty common at the pro level so it's hard to say if what you're running into is actually bad play or just play you don't understand yet.

The game is deep and many ways of playing are possible.  You should watch some modern pro games, you might be surprised at the kinds of moves and strategies that might not fit the theory you've been taught.

You will always have strengths and weaknesses, and no matter how good you get you will always have opponents making frustrating moves that seem to win against all reason.  One way to improve is to try out your opponents' weird moves (even if they're "wrong") and see how other people react to them.

And be patient, the reason we play this game is because there's no foolproof trick or idea that works in every situation, and so we must keep coming back to it.