With just seconds left to play, stones fly quickly from four hands, yet land on the board precisely as the two pairs of players battle for the last few points. “We all made some mistakes at the crunching final minutes,” said my partner Yinli Wang, “it was a very hard game, and (our opponents) played very well.” We managed to come up a few points ahead in the end, and won this year’s North American Pair Go Championship at the U.S. Go Congress in early August, which attracted 50 pairs.
For thousands of years, go has been a one-on-one contest of courage, intelligence and persistence. And while there are so many great stories about legendary go players, almost all of them were male. Pair Go brings the game to a completely different level of mind sports, as each pair seeks to understand each other’s moves, and works as a team to improve and achieve together. Pair Go provides a chance to become your kids’ teammate, an opportunity to get involved in your grandchildren’s sport, adds breathtaking moments between partners and can bring out even more of the game’s natural beauty.
In this year’s Pair Go semi-finals, a strong American couple, Joanne (4d) and Ned Phipps (7d), defeated the top-seeded youth pair, and Yinli and I, a Chinese pair, prevailed over Tatsuko Okunaga 4d from Japan and her grandson Christopher Kiguchi 6d. Both games featured exciting large-scale “chasing-dragon” battles, which were much appreciated by the fans who watched live on KGS. The final was completely the opposite, with both pairs showing extraordinary ability in balancing territory and moyo. There was not even a single invasion by either side, and Yinli and I were able to build a small lead after consolidating the bottom moyo. The Phippses then tried to enclose our center dragon, and while the attack was not effective, they found a way to substantially reduce the bottom territory after we got greedy in the right-bottom corner. As both pairs entered their final minutes in a very close game, the Phippses missed a rotation and were penalized 3 big points. Yinli and I seemed just one step from the trophy, but a moment later we also missed a rotation and gave the “bonus” right back, though we did eke out a 4.5-point win in the end to take the championship. A lot of couples have already shown strong interest in go when I tell them about my fun experience in Portland and we hope more people in America will “go together” in the future.