The Week in Chess

Magnus Carlsen beat Aryan Tari to take the Lead of the 8th Altibox Norway Chess tournament in Stavanger while the former leader Alireza Firouzja lost an Armageddon to Fabiano Caruana and in third place Levon Aronian lost yet another Armageddon tie-break, this time to Jan-Krzysztof Duda.

Carlsen gave a wonderful demonstration of positional chess against Tari but the gulf in class was quite obvious. Firouzja played his Caro-Kann again vs Caruana and was quite a bit worse straight out of the opening but starting with 15...c5 he managed to generate counter play and after 21.Bd7 (computers suggest 21.a4) he was completely equal. The Caro-Kann didn't hold up quite so well in the Armageddon and Caruana won a fine game. Levon Aronian surprised Duda by playing 1.e4 and he chose an Accelerated Dragon Sicilian - Aronian looked to have the advantage but soon this disappeared and there was a draw by repetition. Duda chose the Fort Knox French in the Armageddon and Aronian got no advantage, it still came down to seconds for each side when Aronian had to try something but he just ended up with a lost position.

Round 8 Standings: 1st Carlsen 16.5, 2nd Firouzja 15.5, 3rd Aronian 13, 4th Caruana 12.5, 5th Duda 8.5, 6th Tari 1.5.

Rest Day Wednesday 14th Oct 2020

Round 9 4pm Thursday 15th Oct 2020 Firouzja-Carlsen, Duda-Caruana, Tari-Aronian.