Several of the pairs competing at the 2013 International Amateur Pair-Go Championship were married, but the Romanian pair, Lucretiu Calota and Irina Davis (ne Suciu), went them one better: they are married and both came accompanied by their spouses. While the Romanians were playing (and defeating) the Japanese pair from the Kyushu-Okinawa region in round four, Ranka took the opportunity to talk with Irina’s husband Ian Davis, who is himself a pair go player.

Ranka: How did you become interested in go, and in pair go?
Ian: I started playing go back in university. There was someone I knew in the chess club who introduced me to the game. That would have been in 1999 or 2000, when I was nineteen or twenty years old. There are not many people to play with when I was at university, so it was not until I had finished university that I started playing seriously. I didn’t start playing pair go until I was about twenty-three, when I was working at my first job in Cambridge. My first game was actually a game of rengo at the club, and then I started playing pair go on the Internet, I started because there was a very big go club in Cambridge and I wanted to learn the game properly.

Ranka: Why on the Internet?
Ian: There weren’t that many pair go tournaments back then. It was quite difficult to get a game.

Ranka: How did it work out?
Ian: Many of the first pair go games I had were quite disastrous. Sometimes you play with someone who’s very serious, and if you make a joseki mistake because you’re about 20 kyu, they get very angry–they just resign–so it wasn’t always a harmonious introduction to the game. It had its ups and downs, but I kept at it, and I still like playing pair go.

Ranka: Do you compete in pair go tournaments?
Ian: I think my first pair go tournament was the London Open in 2007 or 2008, where pair go was a side event. My partner was my teacher Guo Juan, and we won the event. We won it twice, in two different years. After that I played with some other partners, including Irina, but on the Internet I played pair go quite frequently, because I enjoy it.

Ranka: Why is that?
Ian: It’s more relaxing to play pair go. There’s not as much pressure on you, and it’s more sociable, so it’s nice.

Ranka: When you play pair go on the Internet, where is your partner usually located?
Ian: Normally in a different country. After university, I lived in Cambridge for about one year, then moved back to Northern Ireland, where I’m originally from. I had some friends in France I used to play with, and I also played sometimes with people I knew in Cambridge. But last year I moved to France, to work as a software tester for Reuters, and now I play pair go quite regularly with my wife. We were married six months ago, but we still play as a pair on the Internet.

Ranka: Do you prefer pair go to ordinary go?
Ian: I don’t know if I could say which way I prefer. It depends on which mood I’m in. Ultimately I like them both. After all, it’s just different ways of playing the same game.

Ranka: Thank you.