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IGS 1992
February, IGS goes to public. After many tests by tim and tweet, the first Go server in history is open to people with Internet access. Server's site is at University of New Mexico. March. More and more and more and more players appear on IGS. Some joke that this is the best invention since paper. :-) April 24, first time a professional player plays a game on IGS. Jiang Jujo 9 dan, from China, uses the account "tobe" plays a game vs ychen. At this time, most watcher still don't know that tobe is a pro. Only later when Jiang will play a half-dozen more games, people realize that the strongest player in the Western world has appeared on IGS. Note: tobe = tweet June 7, a new server in France, a virtual copy of the New Mexico server, has its first game played. Manager of this server is fmc. Three days later, on June 10, another new server in Berkeley is put in public use. The Berkeley server is to replace the New Mexico server as the main site. Its managers are, again, tweet and tim. The old server, in NM, will be used less and less, and eventually closed. July-August, IGSWCT -- IGS World Championship Tournament. Nearly 90 players are involved in a tournament consisting of 4 groups. At the end, over 300 games are played, and all the orginization is single-handed by a popular kibitzer, UFO. Player m6 is to win the championship of Group 1, thus earning the title IGS92. Meanwhile, two more professionals appear on IGS. On July 10, Tracy Jin in New York uses the name "tracy" to play a game with dong. This will be the only game Tracy plays on IGS in 1992. On July 11, a former Taiwan Meijin, Sheah Chen, plays his first game on IGS vs zhong. Sheah later will play more than a dozen games on IGS in 1992, including encounters with two IGS 7-dans, khuang and lzy. Sheah logs on from University of Illinois at Urban and Champaign. Early September, focus shifts to Amsterdam, Holland (the Netherlands). The first game of 1992 Japan's Meijin Sen is to played in Amsterdam. With the help of some IGS'ers in Amsterdam, especailly jansteen, this is to be shown live on IGS. For warmup, on September 4, Nagahara Yoshiaki 6-dan plays a game vs lzy. Then on September 7, Ishida Yoshio 9-dan, who is to be the referee of the Meijin game, plays a game vs dong. Ishida-dong encounter attracts over 100 observers at one time, a sure unofficial record on IGS. September 9-10, first game of Meijin Sen 1992 is shown live on IGS. Kobayashi Koichi and Otake Hideo start their best-of-seven matchup in a hotel in Amsterdam. Two IGS'ers, jansteen and AshaiRey, type in the moves for Kobayashi and Otake, respectively, based on the information received from TV terminals. The game is played in 16 hours, while the kibitzing on IGS lasts 18 hours. IGS-produced game file collects 3053 kibitzes, worth over 140KB of memory. :-) October-November. More and more and more players appear on IGS. :-) December, a new command, 'translate', is added to IGS. Its function is to translate some Go terms among Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, Germany, Dutch, and French. From now on, many IGS Go players will become linguists. :-) December 16, "IGS Summit." The France server manager, fmc, meets Berkeley server managers, tim and tweet, in San Francisco. At 6:32 P.M., they shook hands at the intersection of Grant Avenue and Pine Street in downtown San Francisco, near Chinatown. Later they will have dinner together in Japantown. :-)
I just heard the last ticks of 1992 (Boy, I've worked on this for two hours? Okay it's a slow modem and a noisy phone line. :-)
Jim
Z. Yu
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