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Tartrate

 

Tartrate Gossip
    Keywords: People, Humour

Many people are curious to know what tartrate's identity in real life may be, despite his wish not to make it a quest. Here are a few guesses and arguments.

1. Tartrate is Jie Li.

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.

He has a new picture in his profile which appears to be a bottle of some sort of Smuckers product with a black and white go stone on top. He claims there's a secret message encoded in it. It appears that the contents of the jar in the pic are either marmalade or pineapple dessert topping. If it's the latter he might be Cho Chikun as he used to play on IGS under the nickname "Pineapple."

The chemical symbol for tartaric acid is C4H6O6...'CHO'. Tartaric acid is found in pineapples as well as grapes

Velirun: Then again, he may just be messing with you.

Fhayashi: Clearly, there's jelly in that jar, and that's because he is "Jie Li" which sounds like jelly. He seems to have confirmed my long standing suspicion.

Fwiffo: He was on KGS again tonight. He said something along the lines of "Apparently I'm Jie Li and I didn't even know it all these years. Wow."

mgoetze: A reliable source told me he knows who tartrate is (he's not telling, obviously) and it's not Jie Li.

Dieter: Hmmm. You don't want to tell us who told you that someone told him he's tartrate and that he's not Jie Li but that same unknown didn't want to tell you who. Now I'm telling you I'm going to tell this to somebody but I'd rather not tell you to whom. It might be tartrate, for all I know ...

mgoetze: I didn't say the method this person used to find out was having someone tell him he is tartrate. ;)

Fhayashi: Anyways, have you ever seen Jie Li and tartrate in the same place at the same time? I don't think so... =)

2. Tartrate is Jimmy Cha

Tamsin: 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.

ZeroKun: Now that hes back on, his english seems worse than before. Incomplete sentences and wrong words and such.

Fhayashi: (May 18,2003) tartrate claimed not to be Jimmy Cha, but who know's if he (or she) is telling the truth?

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...

3 Tartrate is TicTacToe?

Tartrate is clearly a nonesense name. However a player of tartrate's strength would never surely never pick a frivilous name, therefore the name itself must be a clue to his identity. Examining the name closely we can see that it contains 3 Ts. The same number of Ts appears in TicTacToe?'s name. TicTacToe? is often seen watching the games of Tartrate and sometimes acurately predicts the next move The final clinching proof is that both names end in E.

Matt Noonan: Though I like that theory.. I've watched all of Tartrate's games and also played many games with Tictactoe. They aren't the same person, I'm sure of it, and I have no logical proof of this statement. Sometimes you just know, you know?

4 Tartrate is GnuGo secret beta 3.5.4

phenomene: Sorry, could'nt resist. :-) But if you disagree, please prove this hypothesis is worse than the preceding ones! After all, isn't Tartrate's style above any human style?

5. Tartrate is not Michael Jackson?.

MK: Michael was on Friday in court. Friday was the day Tartrate lost on KGS for the first time. Although this is a coincidence, lets assume tartrate is not a pop music star.


The etymology of tartrate

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.

More clues from Webster's Dictionary:

Tartar

Etymology: Middle English Tartre, from Middle French Tartare, probably from Medieval Latin Tartarus, modification of Persian TAtAr? -- more at TATAR
Date: 14th century
1 capitalized : a native or inhabitant of Tartary
2 capitalized : TATAR 2
3 often capitalized : a person of irritable or violent temper
4 : one that proves to be unexpectedly formidable

Tar-ta-rus

Etymology: Latin, from Greek Tartaros
: a section of Hades reserved for punishment of the wicked

Ta-tar

Etymology: Persian TAtAr?, of Turkic origin; akin to Turkish Tatar Tatar
Date: 1811
1 : a member of any of a group of Turkic peoples found mainly in the Tatar Republic of Russia and parts of Siberia and central Asia
2 : any of the Turkic languages spoken by the Tatar peoples


wms: I have heard this before, that tartrate lost games in simul before, but I cannot find any such games in the KGS archives. Can anybody confirm this to be the case? If it is true, then it seems games were lost. Twice I lost a day's worth of game records due to errors, perhaps the simul game was in one of those days.

  • wms: Oops, just solved my own mystery. The account that played the games was called "Tartrate2". Now the mystery is, how can we be sure that Tartrate2 was Tartrate? And why did Tartrate use that other account?

ZeroKun: He said he would get on another account before, i guess he didnt want to lose on the original account :)

Fhayashi: The most disturbing fact was that tartrate "returned" ZeroKun's soul not long before his first loss in a normal game. Coincidence? I think not...

Floris: Eh? Returned ZK's soul? Did tart steal his then??

ZeroKun: no, actually i gave it to him for a game :)


Shredder?: I think you guys are looking to far into this. I doubt that his/her name or that pic has such a deep meaning. What's the point of wasting the time in making his/her name and that pic to be a clue to his identity? For all anybody knows s/he is some player on KGS or IGS that was a beginner and was flamed alot, left, went to a different server with a new name and got alot better or just got a good teacher and joined some clubs, then s/he came back to KGS and decided to mess with everyones' minds. Heck, I've done it before (not with go or other games, but on forums and such online) and its like having a second chance in life, and if you know what your doing, it works like a charm (some skill is required though, different personalities, typing, charteristics, etc.). It's also alot of fun going back and forth between 2 acounts and messing with people(having them trying to figure who you are, etc.). I'm not saying that s/he is doing so, but that it's possible that s/he is.



This is a copy of the living page "Tartrate Gossip" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.