Why don't more people use Tygem?

[Kirby]

@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.

[emerus]

@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.

How do you get the Korean client??

[wineandgolover]

No mac client. Deal breaker for me.

[Pippen]

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

[Boidhre]

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

[Kirby]

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

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".

[Kirby]

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

[Pippen]

How do you guys rate Tygem vs. WBaduk?

Like

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

[Kirby]

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.

[oren]

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.

[leichtloeslich]

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

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.

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

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.

[Kirby]

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

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.
.

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.

[emerus]

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

±âºÐÁÁÀº ´ë¼¼Á¡ÀÔ´Ï´Ù.
Áö±Ý±îÁö´Â ¹éÀÇ È帧ÀÌ ±¦Âú¾Æ º¸ÀÔ´Ï´Ù.

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.

[oren]

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.

[Kirby]

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?