Can someone more familiar with the chess world than me shed light on something that piqued my curosity?

The recent Caissa awards in Moscow featured pair chess (man-woman versus man-woman, taking turns). I have never heard of this in chess before (and, after all, pair go is relatively recent). I was wondering whether it was an idea chess had picked up from go. Many Russian chess writers seem to make passing but invariably favourable references to go.

Well how old is pair go? I have read a small tournament report on pair chess from about a 10 year old magazine.

I played in the Pair Go tournament at the Canterbury European Go Congress in 1992, and there were other similar events before that.

Best wishes.

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In chess I am aware of "Tandem Chess" or "Bughouse Chess", which is described e. g. in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bughouse_chess.

But this is a different concept from pair go or "Rengo" since in Tandem Chess you can - instead of doing a regular chess move - insert pieces which were captured by your team partner before.

Regarding pair chess in the sense of Rengo, I have never heard of it even if I am actively playing in a chess club.

The first I heard about pair go was in the 1970s. It was played in the Kansai region in Japan with pro-am pairs, not male-female pairs. Instead of alternating players at every turn, each partner got five moves before switching. (I subscribed to a Kansai-kiin magazine at that time. )

Rengo, OC, has a very long history.

We played it a little in Los Alamos, where we first called it Tandem Go, and later Random Go. To make pairs roughly even, my partner was usually around 7 kyu. I enjoyed the challenge of unanticipated positions when it became my turn to play. Unfortunately, it actually caused a lot of strain on my partners. They would say to themselves, I know that that group is alive because Bill tenukied, but how does it live? (By contrast, bridge is a partnership game, and weaker partners say to themselves, my partner will carry me. )

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Everything with love. Stay safe.

Aha! Next time I'm playing pair go I will grab a handful of stones and lay them out in 4 columns...My partner can play them as needed.