I just played on it for the first time the other day, and I don't understand why it doesn't have a stronger US community. The client is great, it has a native iPad client (!) that doesn't require you to jump through hoops like KGS does, and most importantly, it's got developers who actually seem to care about it instead of neglecting it.

I picked up playing again on tygem recently and like it as well. I lend my iPad to my father though who is in hospital at the moment. But soon...

The PC client has some odd bugs for me like the buttons not being fully viewable. It's a decent place to play games, but KGS just seems to have overall better features.

The tygem client doesn't work very well with linux, in my experience.

Also they don't have an Android client which makes me lose interest away from the PC. I picked up the wbaduk client for Android in Japanese, and it works well.

I guess the real question is whether wbaduk or Tygem is better.

If I play games on my iPad I can't get the files down onto my pc for reviewing. Otherwise I really like it there. Fighting is crazy.

Because there appears to be a strange GUI bug where the resign button isn't clickable for any of my opponents.

The resign button only appears when you're ready to go to counting :p
Joking aside, the only bug I see sometimes is the bug where the opponent resigns and leaves immediately but the client tells you he disconnected and to wait 5 min. If you see the resignation then you're safe to exit the game.

When comparing wbaduk to tygem I'm vastly in favour of tygem. The same holds true for kgs vs tygem. Tygem rank system is simply better and if your opponent is rude and doesn't want to end the game or tries to cheat, you can call an admin who will react very fast. There are plenty of friendly people on tygem (I have accumulated a few friends there who seem to appear often when I play games. They barely speak English but still ^^). Tygem is all in all a great server for playing, but for kibitzing and socializing KGS is the server of choice. The reason most westerners avoid tygem is because they miss the social stuff KGS provides, but tygem has alot more strong opponents so if you're a mid-high dan then I can recommend tygem even more than if you're SDK/low-dan. If you're ddk/sdk kgs is probably better because in the kyus, the tygem rankings are weird and sandbagger infested. When you get to dan level, the playing experience improves drastically ;d

edit: It also feels kinda cool because of the flag feature. Aww yiir, Represent!

I don't understand the sandbagger hate. Normally people would kill for an even game against a stronger opponent. Why do things suddenly change just because someone is pretending to be a rank they aren't? The games in which I'm sandbagged are the best ones, because those are the ones where I'm usually punished the hardest for my mistakes.

That being said, so far the only thing I dislike about Tygem is that the score estimator doesn't seem to work in review mode, and the save game feature appears to be broken.

When did people ever like charlatans?

_________________
North Lecale

I dislike sandbaggers because when I want to play an even game against someone of my level I don't want it to turn out to be a sandbagger.

If I'm going to play against a stronger opponent I'd rather get a review afterwards from that opponent. A true sandbagger doesn't tend to give reviews.

The refutations are left as exercises for the student.

More seriously, they'd probably be good games to post here or on the gtl if you aren't able to figure out where you went wrong.

About saving games from Tygem - it works. Also if you played on iPad your games are available via PC client. All is explained in other topics here on L19 (how to download a game from tygem, where the files are saved etc.)

Thanks for the info. I'll definitely try that.

No Mac client, in my case

Same here -- no Mac client, and trying to get it to work via Wine
has been an utter failure.

I got a Mac client (basicly a wine wrapper in a dmg) from a friend of a friend. I've long since lost the link, and no longer remember which friend (because it was from a random Facebook post). I might still have the dmg somewhere -- if they haven't updated the client, it might still work.

Tygem sucks.

I know there are people out there who have gotten it to work using Wine -- it just never has for me. It only successfully launches about 50% of the time, and the other 50% of the time everything works -- except the mouse (or trackpad). I can see what games are being played, but not view any of them or play myself. So, thanks, but it seems unlikely that would fix the problem, since I've already essentially been down that route.

No Android client is my main reason.

My only reason.