About
Links
The tournament gathered together 14 pairs from 8 different countries: Russia, Germany, the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Romania, and Switzerland. Even though the number of the players was quite small compared to other editions of the tournament (e.g., 2017: 28 participants, 2016: 18 participants, 2015: 40 participants, 2014: 19, etc.), the level of the pairs this year was very high: 11/14 pairs were of dan level, and 9/14 had a rank of at least 4 dan.
From just looking at the ranks of the players, we could say that there were no really unexpected results. Yet it came as a bit of a surprise that the favorites, Russia's Kovaleva and Surin, a pair with a lot of fighting spirit, and who had won this tournament many times, finished only in 3rd place.
The top three places were taken by:
1. Fazulzyanova & Dinerstein (5d) from Russia
2. Ente & Teuber (5d) from Germany
3. Kovaleva & Surin (6d) from Russia
The full results list can be found here.
A small side-tournament for double-digit kyu players was played in parallel and these are the results:
1. Haruna Okano (4K) + Alan Essoh (25K)
2. Myriam Bossel (30K) + Claude Roy (7K)
3. Marie Badre (15K) + Nathan Lacrabère (18K)
4. Soledad Andany (18K) + Kaan Özbey (17K)
The Pair go Championship for next year will take place in Groningen, in the Netherlands, in April/May 2019. However, before that, the European congress will be hosting, like each and every year, an Open Pair go Championship in which both amateur and professional players mingle and fight. This tournament is the biggest Pair go event that takes place annually in Europe.
All the pictures used in this article have been kindly shared by Li Yue.
Trivia: At The Future of Go Summit in 2017 Alphago also played Pair go together with human players (see video with the review). Could it be that in the future we will also have tournaments in which humans and boots play together? :-)
