European Pair Go Championship
Pairs from ten countries competed in the European Pair Go Championship, a six-round McMahon event held in Lyon, France, June 2-3, 2012. The field featured pros Svetlana Shikshina and Alexander Dinerchstein of Russia, who showed their professional mettle by downing a succession of amateur opponents. These included two very strong Eastern European pairs: Klara Zaloudkova and Jan Hora (Czechia). who finished second, and Natalia Kovaleva and Dimitri Surin (Russia) who finished third. The next three places went to French pairs: Ngoc-Trang Cao and Antoine Fenech (4th), Dominique Cornuejols and Denis Karadaban (5th), and Monique Berreby and Olivier Clergue (6th). Julie Artigny and French champion Thomas Debarre provided the drama of the tournament by losing to another French pair (Charlotte Vielfaure and Benjamin Papazoglou) in the first round, then storming back with four straight wins to earn a pairing with Svetlana and Alexander in the last round. Had they won their last game the championship would have been decided by SOSOS points, but they lost and finished ninth (Charlotte and Benjamin finished tenth), leaving Svetlana and Alexander in undefeated possession of first place.
The complete results can be found here.
Twelve of the games can be viewed here.