This is Haengma - Kim Sung Rae

[daal]

(not sure whether I opened this thread now as new thread or Reply. Sorry in advance if a moderator has to shift now my entry to OT)

ROTFL

[RobertJasiek]

Tommie, in web forums, threads have a great tendency to become off-topic WRT the thread title. There can be every degree from subject-related to -unrelated. I agree that in general more new threads should be started when discussion changes topics. When everybody is involved in the heat of a discussion with highly related mutual context, it is not always easy to jump to a new thread. (E.g., should you or I have done so first when discussing "starting new threads" as a topic?) Maybe it becomes easier if everybody develops a greater tendency towards starting new threads instead of departing more and more from a thread title's subject.

[cyclops]

Well, I am fresh to this thread. Though I know about its sad continuations. I started voting: "satisfactory". Why? ( Not defining anything ). Well, I kept on reading with plenty of interest. But in the end I didn't feel much more competent about how to connect my stones in an actual game situation. There was too deep reading involved in deciding whether some moves adds up in moving efficiently or not. Maybe I'm just too weak in that respect. The book might help me in keeping an eye on those aspects and to evaluate my choices.

[Knotwilg]

"Haengma is the local to global relation and development of all stones"

Sounds like the best summary of that is "Go".

Frankly, I become quite annoyed with concepts that remain a mystery despite many attempts to define them. Maybe they're just a hoax then. If you can't tell me what it is, only repeatedly say that it is not what I'm suggesting, then probably it is "everything" or "nothing".

We shouldn't be guessing. Maybe "haengma" is not possible to translate but let's then forget about it.

I'm repeatedly studying Minue 6d's Haengma exercises, I've studied and edited his "Haengma tutorial for beginners" on Sensei's and for one am completely fine with "technique" as a translation.

"Technique" has the dynamic quality required and it also suggests the aspect of shape. It also conveniently can refer to a quick combination, a long variation or a player's style.

If translating oriental terms is not always possible for 100%, I'm perfectly fine with having a practical, common Western word, conveying the concept to the largest possible extent.

[RobertJasiek]

"Haengma is the local to global relation and development of all stones"

Sounds like the best summary of that is "Go".

Go involves much more, e.g., sequences of positions. Already that is much more than the relation of all stones of one (reference) position.

"technique" as a translation.

Now that is yet somethine else.

[entropi]

Frankly, I become quite annoyed with concepts that remain a mystery despite many attempts to define them. Maybe they're just a hoax then. If you can't tell me what it is, only repeatedly say that it is not what I'm suggesting, then probably it is "everything" or "nothing".

Welcome to the club I feel exactly the same way about many other concepts, as well. This includes the mysterious concept of fundamentals.

I understand that some concepts may be abstract and hard to explain. But if the discussion becomes a word game rather than clear (yet still abstract) guidelines, it raises doubts about the usefulness of the concept as a whole.

[RobertJasiek]

Fundamentals start with the most fundamental fundamentals (eh, above rules level) like connection status. Every other, also every advanced topic has its fundamentals though: the topic's basics.

Every somewhat advanced topic not solved yet suffers / profits from linguistic studies. That was so for ko, thickness, influence until I defined them in general and is so for still not sufficiently precisely defined concepts like shape, suji or aji. That does not mean though that all those (rather or very) advanced concepts would be meaningless. Instead it means that more or even much more research on them should be done.

Haengma is a secondary strategic concept, i.e. some relying on an understanding of primary / more basic / less high level strategic concepts. Therefore haengma is still difficult to grasp. As difficult as "beautiful shapes" or "natural flow like water", which could be perceived as secondary concepts, too.

[Mike]

This thread made me chuckle. No, not just because western people choke on semantics over a word, but because in Korea when Kim was still writing this book we(the students) had a very different definition for this word. It's an inside joke based on when he tried to explain the "way of the running horse" to us and there were some.. mishaps, let's say, in word usage. I haven't thought of it for a while.. Thanks, I needed a laugh.

[markeemark]

Does anyone have a link to where I can get a copy of this in the UK?

Thanks

mark

[nagano]

Does anyone have a link to where I can get a copy of this in the UK?

Thanks

mark

You can get it from goshop-keima.com, which is based in the Netherlands. You have to pay in Euros though.

[markeemark]

Thanks Nagano

I'll have a look at their website.

regards

Mark

[cyclops]

In the meantime I have solved another problem raised in this thread. How to clap six and a half times. That is easy. Just clap 6 times with both hands and then once with a single hand.

[markeemark]

Nagano

Book ordered today with OTME,

Can't wait to see them.

Regards

Mark

[lemmata]

What follows is just my own opinion.

I know that there is a tendency in the western world to assign certain mystical qualities to Asian go terms (and each Asian nation likes to claim some inherent superiority in their go that is not found in the go of other nations), but...

Haengma isn't "The Way of the Moving Horse" or something mystical secret knowledge. Haeng=moving and ma=horse. We can understand it as a literary way of expressing the act of placing (moving) stones (horse), especially since Koreans like to use the word horse to refer to game pieces. That is, haengma can best be understood as just playing go. Of course, when pros discuss good haengma, they mean good local moves in the context of the global situation. Again, that's just good go.

People are running into trouble defining haengma because it is so broad as to encapsulate all aspects of go. Instead of calling it haengma, we might just call it "good go".

If you read Korean go books, you might see terms like "haengma in the opening", "tesuji in haengma", "endgame haengma", "haengma for invasion and reduction", "fast haengma", "slow haengma" as well as the Korean versions of the familiar Japanese terms pop up in books without "haengma" in the title. In these contexts, haengma can roughly be translated as simply "moves" (pl. noun). This becomes especially clear when one starts reading about "bad haengma".

There are some cool Korean "haengma dictionaries" whose contents might surprise some. They just consist of chapters featuring knight's moves, large knight's moves, one-point jumps, two-point jumps, iron-pillar, diagonal move, diagonal jump, etc, and examples of situations when they are good/bad moves/tesuji in some global context.

In that sense, Fujisawa Shuko's lovely 4-volume Tesuji Dictionary might have been called a Haengma Dictionary had Shuko been Korean because it takes a somewhat similar approach.

Haengma isn't some magical Korean secret...it's just good go. There are many nice Korean books with the word "haengma" in the title, but they're just books about good go.

[dfan]

Cho Hun-hyeon's [books Lectures on Go Techniques and] Lectures on the Opening give the wrong solution (actually multiple wrong solutions) first.

Not in my copy.

Nor in mine. I misremembered and incorrectly generalized from the Lectures on Go Techniques books, which do give the wrong answer first, to Lectures on the Opening, which does not. Thank you for the correction.