Two Games Without a Move: Israel Forfeits Round 6, Netherlands and Bulgaria Take Full Points

Eleven in the morning, Samarkand time. Four Netherlands players walk into the main playing hall of the 2026 Chess Olympiad. Board one is set, the clocks are wound, the scoresheets are open. Across the table, Israel's seats are completely empty — no players, no captain, not even a small flag on the board's edge. The arbiter waits out the prescribed time, writes the report, and the score is fixed. In the women's hall a few dozen metres away, Bulgaria follows exactly the same procedure against the Israel women's team. The two biggest results of Round 6 in Samarkand were not decided by a Sicilian opening or a Berlin Defence, but by a religious calendar and two signatures of refusal. Cameras capture the Netherlands players walking in, looking around, then sitting down to wait. None of them touches a piece. That was the strangest game I have witnessed in more than three decades sitting in the press area of elite chess events.

Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, fell on 20 and 21 September 2026. The 2026 Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, carried no rest day for it. In Round 5, played on Sunday 20 September, organisers found an agreement: Singapore's open team and Colombia's women's team accepted a start one hour and fifteen minutes earlier than the standard schedule. Those matches were moved to the Savitsky Hotel so the Israeli players could finish before sundown. It was a civil agreement, and it ran smoothly.

By Round 6, on Monday 21 September, Israel submitted a formal request to FIDE with two options: play after 19:30 local time, or move the games to 22 September, the event's official rest day. FIDE contacted both opponents. The Netherlands in the open section and Bulgaria in the women's section refused. When Israel failed to appear on time, both teams were awarded full points by forfeit without a single move being played.

An FIDE spokesperson was explicit: "Unlike in the previous round, neither opponent agreed to play at a different time from the official schedule. They are fully entitled to decline such a request."

The rule here needs stating clearly, because many readers assume FIDE can impose a solution. It cannot. Under the Olympiad system, the right to adjust playing time belongs to the opponent, not to the organiser. FIDE only acts as the intermediary making contact. One "no" from the Netherlands or Bulgaria is enough to close the door.

This is where I want to slow down, well past the news itself. In elite chess, the schedule is not administrative procedure — it is a piece, and in Round 6 in Samarkand it was placed on the board at precisely the right moment.

Purely on format: the Olympiad runs an 11-round Swiss system with team scoring. A 4-0 forfeit win is worth exactly the same as a win at the board, but it costs something entirely different. The Netherlands burned no mental calories, exposed no opening variation, revealed no endgame weakness and, most importantly, spent no preparation time. While other leading teams ground through four or five hours under the pressure of their circadian clocks, the Netherlands entered Round 7 fully charged.

Israel, meanwhile, lost both matches outright. The open team was seeded 22nd and sat 22nd after winning four of five rounds. The women's team was also seeded 22nd and sat 20th with an identical record. That ranking tells you Israel were not medal contenders — they were chasing qualification slots and position. In a Swiss system, every win lifts you into a stronger pairing group, every loss throws you back toward the middle. A 0-4 forfeit in Round 6 means two tiers of opponent lost, Buchholz points lost, and the entire psychological momentum of four wins in five rounds wiped out.

Based on my experience covering team events over 32 years as a chess commentator for VTC, there is a pattern few outside the industry notice: a team's psychology is not built by points, it is built by sitting opposite each other at a board and winning together. A forfeit win creates no shared memory. A forfeit loss creates a very bad one — it teaches young players that they do not control their own fate. For a squad as young as Israel's, that is a poisonous gift.

FIDE is caught in the middle. They permitted an adjustment in Round 5, and that set a precedent. By Round 6, FIDE could not force the opponents, because doing so would violate the other team's autonomy. Nor could they claim there was no way — they had themselves proved in Round 5 that a way existed. The gap between those two rounds is a procedural gap, and it will be exploited again.

There is one more layer I want to state plainly. The women's section is always treated as an appendix to chess events. The same request, the same day, and Colombia's women's team agreed while Bulgaria's women's team refused. Nobody called it a major incident. In that evening's coverage, the women's section got one line. The question I asked did not sound like a woman's question, but the answers they dodged did not sound like men's answers either.

Now to the part where I may be wrong.

The most popular telling casts Israel as the victim of unfair treatment and the Netherlands and Bulgaria as the merciless ones. I am not buying it.

Both the Netherlands and Bulgaria were entering the decisive phase of the tournament. Bulgaria in the women's section had a far higher ranking ambition once Israel, seeded 22nd, sat at the bottom of the top 20. The Netherlands in the open section needed full points to hold the leading group. Agreeing to a time change means disrupting your own circadian rhythm, meal schedule and rest schedule in order to help an opponent play better. No principle of fairness obliges them to do that.

And this is where my suspicion sits deepest: the timing of the request. Israel knew the Yom Kippur dates months in advance. The Olympiad schedule was published publicly. The Round 5 adjustment established a template, and there should have been an agreement at a higher level covering every round that fell inside the religious observance, rather than round-by-round requests at the last minute. Any team that leaves it that late has accepted the risk of refusal.

The point I consider central, and it is not Yom Kippur: this is the first time a major chess event has resolved a religious conflict through a bilateral mechanism. FIDE deferred to the opponents. But should a federation that knows its event is global want to turn an opponent into the party deciding the right to religious observance? Mistakes are not frightening; bending down to pick up the tape at 2 a.m. is what makes a forecaster — and I read FIDE's procedure three times, stopping each time at the same sentence: "They are fully entitled to decline such a request."

Samarkand 2026 will be remembered for its games, but I hope it is also remembered for a procedural question. A world-class tournament needs a standard clause on religious observance dates, signed before the pairings are published, not a chain of last-minute emails begging opponents for a favour.

If that does not happen before the next Olympiad, remember this prediction: at least one more team will lose full points for a reason that has nothing to do with chess. In that empty stadium years ago, I found a tactical diagram lying quietly under a seat instead of the roar of the crowd — in Samarkand, I found a calendar lying quietly under the board.