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Tartrate
Keywords: People
tartrate is a very strong player on KGS. He has yet to lose a game [1]. Opponents left in his wake include Alexandre Dinerchtein 1p, Svetlana Shikshina 1p [2] and "mymy" (rumored to be 6p). While amicable and somewhat chatty, he has chosen to remain anonymous, and will not answer personal questions such as where he comes from or whether he is a pro. Don't bother asking. DougRidgway To save the curious a web search, "tartrate" refers to any salt of tartaric acid, which naturally occurs in many plants, particularly grapes. Potassium bitartrate (cream of tartar) often crystallizes in the wine cask, and is used in various parts of cooking. Pharmaceutically, many basic drugs are formulated by reacting them with a weak acid such as tartaric to form a rapidly dissolving salt, which would then be called drugname tartrate, but the tartrate is just there to help the drug dissolve and plays no role in the bioactivity of the drug. Charles Tartaric acid or tartrate crystals often are found at the bottom of good bottles of wine. Makes me wonder if this handle was chosen less than randomly. jvt: About the fridge picture: tartrate crystals is what you get in wine bottles after temperature changes, especially cooling. The dissolved tartaric acid falls out of solution. GoStone: To remove tartrate crystals just decant the wine carefully. The wine is then detartrated, the longest palindromic word in the English language. Fhayashi I asked him if he was a pro or not. He pointed out that he had just beaten some pros... Though he won't say he's a pro, he doesn't deny it. He claims to be a secret KGS weapon to get more players to play there instead of IGS. He also claimed not to be able to play on IGS, though he said he wasn't banned from it. Tristan: According to AlexandreDinerchtein, he is from Chicago. Now, Jimmy Cha lives there, I believe. Think of a drink rich in tartrates, and you come up with tea (among others). What is tea in Korean? It is cha. Personally, I'd bet money that Jimmy Cha and Tartrate are one and the same. Anonymous: I was in the English room one evening, around 9 pm ET. tartrate was on but said s/he couldn't play because s/he "had to go to dinner". Assuming the evening meal is meant, Chicago (2 timezones earlier[3]) works well. However, I see that Jimmy Cha is listed as 4p. If mymy really is 6p, that seems to put the kibosh on that idea. Velobici: Tartrate has mentioned that he speaks eight languages and can read/write four. His English is fluent, without unusual sentence forms or word choice, indicating use of the language among native users for an extended period of time. Several years ago there was a mystery player on IGS. This mystery player was undefeated, amazingly strong a la Sai of Hikaru No Go. That mystery player was Jimmy Cha. Perhaps Jimmy has returned to KGS as our own Sai. Dieter: As a frequent KGS player and kibbitzer, today I watched another of tartrate's amazing performances. This time he won by some 14,5 points against stogon 7d. Not only the ease and the margin by which he wins, also the speed at which he moves is impressive. In contrast, the moves themselves often strike me as slow (Bob, another positive slow for you). The match against mymy was the one everybody was waiting for: at that time mymy was unbeaten in 40 successive games and tartrate had just made a little reputation. Tartrate won, by virtue of making a gigantic sacrifice and the required positional judgment. Both displayed a razor edge semeai skill. Fhayashi: (May 18,2003) tartrate claimed not to be Jimmy Cha, but who know's if he (or she) is telling the truth? Hyppy (May 19 2003) Tartrate had this to say this morning on KGS: tartrate: someone should put "tartrate STRONGLY suggest that while he is playing games that all the dans ( especially higher dans ) comment on his game for the community, and is angry and dissapointed when they don't" also: tartrate: I'll tell you one thing though, if looking for me gets out of hand you won't have a tartrate to play on kgs anymore Charles My, what a shy attention-seeker. To be fair, I think the main reason for this comment is that he wants the legion of kyu's watching his games to actually learn something from them. Certainly from his comments in games and in the lobby one sees no signs of narcissisism creeping in. ~ian~ Kijoe (May 20 2003): It is quite unlikely that tartrate is Jimmy Cha. Tartrate was playing on KGS on 19th and 20th of May 2003, and on both days Jimmy Cha was playing in World Series of Poker 2003. Fhayashi: and the World Series of Poker news website lists La Hambra, CA as the hometown for Jimmy Cha, rather than Chicago as mentioned above... emk: i bet he is elvis =) Fhayashi: (June 4 2003) latest clue - he said he's better looking than Michael Redmond... unkx80: tartrate has put some haikus from other KGS players in his User Data. See Go haiku. HolIgor: I've seen Tartrate's info on KGS. There is real name there. Tinker Bell, that's who she is! In the spirit of good fun, what is your tartrate Number? Vlad?: What's the big fuss about? :-) Tartrate is Bobby Fischer! Fhayashi: If tartrate does live in Illinois, a search of AGA rankings reveals a number of candidates as to the secret identity - quite a few 7+ dans in that state. eng60340: found this info in many faces of go. Jimmy (Minsoo) Cha, Korean 4 Dan. Born 1951 in Korea. Won All Korea Amateur Championship twice (71-72). Professional 1 Dan in 1974. Has beaten Japanese 9 Dans in international competition. Lives in Los Angeles, CA. Tristan: Let's work out a list of "usual suspects", i.e., all the professionals and other very strong players known to live in the States. Then let's eliminate them from the list when we learn their alibis. The Usual Suspects Jimmy Cha (eliminated?) I'm sure there are more names one could add, but I don't know the go scene in the US very well. Dieter: I think it has been fun to be wondering who (s)he could be, but if (s)he wanted us to know (s)he would have told us by now. This is not a whodunnit but someone who has reasons for remaining anonymous. Let's respect that. Tristan: Good point. Another thing occurs to me, too. While it is fun guessing who tartrate might be, do we really, honestly want to know? Perhaps not knowing is more enjoyable than knowing would be. mgoetze: I certainly would like to know, but I think the extremes people go to are getting ridiculous. If tartrate doesn't want to let us know who he is, then we'll just not find out, or some people will go to extreme lengths to find out and then tartrate will probably never play on KGS again. So, to qualify my original statement, while I'd like to know who tartrate is, I'd much rather watch him play against sariyu. Tristan: I don't think making a list of "usual suspects" is going to extremes (it is more like a game and is pretty unlikely to produce any more than a strong hint, and we probably have that already, anyway), but heaven forbid people took "tartrate-guessing" any more seriously than that. It would be outrageous, for instance, if some fool tried to hack his/her internet connection or invaded his/her privacy in some other tangible way. Dansc: Tartrate has announced in his KGS info that he won't be on much anymore because of computer problems and because he is "very very busy". Let's hope he can still come to play sometimes. [1] Justin: On May 22, 2003, he did lose a few games. Of course, they were part of an 11-game simul, the majority of which he won. His record remains perfect for non-simuls. [1] glibber: That impromptu simultaneous test suffered from a serious miscalculation of the time needed to deal with so many games, and casts no reflection on the ability of tartrate to play Go most excellently.
[2] Dansc: The match between tartrate and Shikshina ("redrose") was an impressive fighting game, with tartrate opening at Tengen. The game involved two large semeais and two large ko fights and ended to a resignation by Shikshina. The game record can be found with the usual KGS kibitz at [3] Lurkefforous?: Chicago is on Central time - one time zone earlier than Eastern - not two. He seems to be living in Central time, I also spoke with him and he mentioned something about teaching go at uic club. [4] Velirun? I've been to all university clubs in Illinois that I've been able to find, including the UIC club, and no one of tartrate's strength has ever shown up. The strongest player to show up to Illinois AGA tournaments has been Sorin Gherman 7d, and skilled as he may be... he is probably not tartrate. However - I am aware that several people in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago receive lessons from Huang Liping, a 5 dan Chinese pro. mdq100 Aug. 21, 2003: I remember that Tartrate told me he is not a pro yet, will be ... But from his skills, he is definitely at a pro level without any doubt. NeoNemesis: I think that tartrate is jie li. Jie li isn't pro yet. I also know that Li Jie is very busy recently because he got into UCSD and during the last week or so he moved to San Diego. I also heard from my teacher that Jie Li has an account on KGS. Being known as a pro slayer in the US, Jie Li undoubtfully could be tartrate. KittyCat?: Before i got banned from KGS i had a nice and long chat with Tartrate, he indeed was a very polite person. I can only remember 1 or 2 things from the Conversation ^^ 1. when i asked him if he was better looking than Michael Redmond he answered: hmm, maybe i shouldnt have said that :) and i didnt mean any offense to MR! 2. I asked him Do you like net go and why.. he answered: well when i play net go i can do other things while playing... anyway, hes really great and nice! Funkybside: Thx for the neat page on this elusive charecter! I've looked at some of his/her stored games and this is a very intersting player. (kittycat -> what does it take to get kicked off of KGS? :0) This is a copy of the living page "Tartrate" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |