There are some neat ways to add some excitement, 'zip' or 'buzz' to your go club program. One way is to run face-to-face tournaments in which players compete to win prizes, improve their ratings or just accumulate accolades! Have you thought about running a Pair Go tournament? They have been a long standing feature of the annual US Go Congress but might be a little daunting for a club to run. Traditional Pair Go Tournaments comprise two person teams each with a male player and a female player, playing a similar team across one board. This is a special case of a Rengo tournament where the number of players per team can be anything greater than 1. In traditional Pair Go Tournaments players on the same team are not allowed to speak or confer about moves, except to say such things as; 'Can we resign', 'Is it my turn' and 'You played out of sequence' - as somebody said "What Fun!". The Tournament Director (TD) can decide on these rules and any others that seem appropriate. Practicing before the US Go Congress may also be a good idea!

Running a Pair Go tournament is now much easier because they are now supported in the latest release of GoClubsOnline (http://goclubs.org). Once a club starts to offer the tournament for online registration, players can sign in for the tournament, then form a team or join an existing team. For handicap Pair Go tournaments, and prior to pairings, TDs can evaluate the average Entering Ratings that are automatically calculated by GoClubsOnline to supply an appropriate Team Entering Rating. TDs can also manage all aspects of the teams, adding, editing, assigning players or deleting teams as necessary.


(partial screen shot from Edit a Pair Go Team Profile)

Once all team members are checked in, the TD can automatically generate pairings between the teams at the click of a button. Bands, Banned Pairings, Results, etc. can all be managed and reported by team just like a regular tournament. (The only real difference being that Rengo tournaments are always unrated.)

For more information and excellent documentation see http://goclubs.org/home.html.

Or you could host the club at a pub, everybody will get a bit of a buzz