Odyssey Two

Almost everything is ready for the 8th Norway Chess to start “over the board” Monday in Stavanger, Norway. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the usual single 10-player round-robin has been turned into a 6-player double round robin, with the same format as last year, including Armageddon. Aside from Magnus Carlsen and Aryan Tari, all others had to quarantine on arrival in Norway; namely they are (in alphabetical order): Levon Grigori Aronian, Fabiano Caruana, Jan-Krzystof Duda, and Alireza Firouzja. This is also the last stop before Caruana go back to Yekaterinburg, Russia (or, who knows, maybe to Tbilisi, Georgia), where on November 1 he will have to play the eight round (as well as other six rounds in the following days) of the Candidates Tournament, which was truncated halfway last March 26 due to Russia’s ban of all air traffic to and from everywhere.