Hm, for me maybe 1 in 3 doesn't greet. Anyway, because of the language barrier I generally assume no ill will.

Just to make sure: you are using the "Greeting" button presets, right?

Take in account that you may be playing with a child (really) or someone that isn't very familiar with computers.

With presets most people greets but still I don't find it so necessary to play a game (taking in account that most games aren't serious anyway)

I had an amusing moment on Tygem during a lunch match today.

The game was more or less over and my opponent, sensing victory, called for auto-scoring.

I accepted and Tygem calculated a 4.5 moku win for me. My opponent immediately rejected the results.

I made the last move of any consequence, he needlessly filled a dame, and I again requested scoring. He accepted and, surprise!, still 4.5 moku win for me.

My opponent immediately rejected the results.

He thought for several minutes, obviously looking for an opening (there were none), then finally passed. I passed immediately. For the third time the score came up with a 4.5 pt win for me.

Finally, it was over! I understand his frustration, he had pushed me around all game and probably expected a win, but I couldn't help but chuckle over his complete denial of the board in front of him.

I registered on Tygem a few months ago but did not play much. The deal breaker for me was the fact that you had to reset the time settings each time you offer a game (at least I didn't find how not to). Looks like nothing but the players there do not wait for too long for the offer to come, so after a few times when my potential opponent left while I was clicking on main time/byo-yomi/replay/estimate, I got tired of it.

Plus, the server doesn't offer anything more than WBaduk, so I didn't see the point in playing there when I already play on WBaduk.

@leichtloeslich: Yes, I did use the prepared greet formulas, basically always "nice to meet you".

@drew: The good thing about tygem is: no more escapers.

Right now I like Tygem more and I have abandoned KGS for good. It's not only the escaper policy. It's the stone clicking problem at KGS, the simple rank system and it's the fact that Tygem players are helluva fighters that find spots to send me shivers I never got at KGS^^. The real problems are: 1. it's impersonal - you cannot upload personal info or a picture and therefore chats are very seldom, 2. there is no thorough information page about tygem and all its details, e.g. I still have no idea how to get see use the buttons "opening" or "lecture", I still have no idea what the "points" are for and why I should "charge" it....

@Pippen:

Regarding point 1, it is possible to upload a picture, and I have done it. It might be the case that you need a paid account, which I had at the time, but I still have a photo that i selected (with a free account). At least with the Korean client, you also have your own page, where you can keep a diary, etc.

Regarding point 2, I think that by and large, there still isn't great English support. Most users are probably from Korea, so I doubt that much effort is spent to support English speakers, though, this has improved in recent years. Also, because most users are not native English speakers, I think it will be some time before you see lively English chat. There is a ton of kibitz in korean, however, particularly for the games of popular players.

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How do you get the Korean client??

No mac client. Deal breaker for me.

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- Brady
Want to see videos of low-dan mistakes and what to learn from them? Brady's Blunders

Does somebody know who creates & maintains Tygem? Is it a guy like WMS, is it a corp.? What does "Tygem" mean anyway?

A rather large company as best I can make out: http://www.tyonline.co.kr/english/

Tygem is managed by a corporation known as TY Online (Tongyang Online), and it was established in 2004.

The name comes from "Tongyang Gem", where gem is like the English word (gem or treasure), and Tongyang (동양) can mean oriental/Eastern.

So you might call the name to mean something like "Oriental Gem".

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be immersed

Correction: TongYang does mean oriental, but int his case, could simply refer tot the company name.

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be immersed

How do you guys rate Tygem vs. WBaduk?

Like

ranks the same?
more players?
more pro's?
lectures?

I like Tygem, but I don't care for wbaduk. I don't think a lot of effort goes into english clients, so they are both bad in that regard.

Tygem is probably most popular server for korean players, so you might have more commentary by hig dan amateurs during big games. If you don't know korean, it is still useful, because you can see the variations they show while waiting for the players to make a new move.

That being said, i can't make a fair assessment between the two, because I haven't played much on wbaduk. I connect to orobaduk for go problems sometimes, but that's about it.

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I think Tygem has more players.

The pro associations are associated more with wbaduk, so all the pro games are displayed there. Tygem has fewer pro games.

The ranks are about the same I think although 9d as a rank doesn't exist on wbaduk.

I play mostly on wbaduk since the android client is better. I usually use the Japanese clients since they are better. As Kirby mentioned before, both have annoying issues on their English windows clients.

Does that refer to the relayed games, or to the games actually played on the server by professionals? Because I was under the impression that on tygem the (P) next to the players' rating means "pro", which would imply that a lot of pros play on tygem on a regular basis.


I'm totally not sure about that. WBaduk ranks, in the low dans, seem stronger to me. And at any rate, WBaduk has an entirely different rating system: http://www.wbaduk.com/wbaduk/rating_system.asp.
At least to me that sounds like it's very different from tygem's, but maybe it's the same, I can't tell.

The main difference from tygem for me is that on WBaduk you can play actual blitz. AFAIK you can't play 10s/move on tygem, but you can on oro.

Somewhat related to that is the style of play: people often say tygem is full of crazy fighting games. I haven't observed anything of the sort.
On WBaduk you can see gigantic kills in high-level games much more often, which might be due to the fact that most 8dans on WBaduk aren't actually very near each other strength-wise (i.e. 8d on WBaduk is even more spread than 9d on tygem) + blitz time controls.

There are many pro games broadcast on Tygem, depending on what server you're connected to. I don't know if they broadcast fewer pro games than Wbaduk or not, but they broadcast many.

To give an example, I'm on Korea server 3 right now, and there are two pro games being broadcast right now. One is the same game that's being broadcast live on BadukTV right now. Interestingly, the Tygem broadcast is a couple of seconds ahead of the BadukTV stream, so I can see the move that's played first on Tygem, and then on BadukTV a few seconds later.

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Is there any way to have the Korean text displayed instead of this?



I remember fooling around with language packs in Windows but had no luck. I figure for some short comments, I could get someone from Google translate.

I was trying to say wbaduk has more relayed games. Tygem has Korean matches and some international. Wbaduk has all of those, the Japanese matches, and the Chinese ones.

I think more pros play rated games on Tygem but fewer relayed games.

Do you have a source for this information?

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