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This article is about the Indian chess player. For other uses, see Sultan Khan.
Mir Sultan Khan (1905 – April 25, 1966) was the strongest chess master of his time from Asia. This manservant from British India traveled with his master to Britain, where he took the chess world by storm. In an international chess career of less than five years (1929-33), he won the British Championship three times in four tries (1929, 1932, 1933), and had tournament and match results that placed him among the top ten players in the world. His master then brought him back to his homeland, where he gave up chess and returned to his humble life. David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld call him "perhaps the greatest natural player of modern times".[1] Although he was one of the world's top players in the early 1930s, FIDE, the World Chess Federation, never awarded him any title (Grandmaster or International Master), as these titles did not exist during his career.
[edit] Chess careerSultan Khan was born in Punjab, British India, now part of Pakistan, where he learned Indian chess from his father at the age of nine.[1][2] Under the rules of that game at the time, the laws of pawn promotion and stalemate were different, and a pawn could not move two squares on the first move.[1] By the time he was 21 he was considered the strongest player in the Punjab.[2] At that time, Colonel Nawab Sir Umar Hayat Khan ("Sir Umar") took him into his household with the idea of teaching him the European version of the game and introducing him to European master chess.[1][2] In 1928, he won the all-India championship, scoring eight wins, one draw, and no losses.[1][2][3] In the spring of 1929, Sir Umar brought him to London, where a training tournament was organized for his benefit.[1][4] Due to his inexperience and lack of theoretical knowledge, he did poorly, tying for last place with H. G. Conde, behind William Winter and Frederick Yates. After the tournament, Winter and Yates trained with him to help prepare him for the British Chess Championship to be held that summer.[4] To everyone's surprise, he won.[1][4][5] Soon afterward, he went back to India with Sir Umar.[1][4] Returning to Europe in May 1930, Sultan Khan began an international chess career that included the defeats of many of the world's leading players.[1] His best results were second to Savielly Tartakower at Liège 1930; third at Hastings 1930-31 (scoring five wins, two draws, and two losses) behind future World Champion Max Euwe and former World Champion José Raúl Capablanca; fourth at Hastings 1931-32; fourth at Bern 1932 (ten wins, two draws, three losses); and a tie for third with Isaac Kashdan at London 1932, behind World Champion Alexander Alekhine and Salo Flohr.[1] Sultan Khan again won the British Championship in 1932 and 1933.[1][6] In matches he defeated Tartakower in 1931 (four wins, five draws, and three losses) and narrowly lost to Flohr in 1932 (one win, three draws, and two losses).[1] Sultan Khan thrice played first board for England at Chess Olympiads. At Hamburg 1930, there was still no rule that teams must put their best player on the top board, and some teams, unconvinced of his strength, matched their second or even third-best player against him.[7] He scored nine wins, four draws, and four losses (64.7%).[8][9] At Prague 1931, he faced a much stronger field.[10] He had an outstanding result, scoring eight wins, seven draws, and two losses (67.6%).[9][11] This included wins against Flohr and Akiba Rubinstein, and draws with Alekhine, Kashdan, Ernst Grünfeld, Gideon Ståhlberg, and Efim Bogolyubov.[10] At Folkestone 1933, he had his worst result, an even score, winning four games, drawing six, and losing four.[12][13] Once again, his opponents included the world's best players, such as Alekhine, Flohr, Kashdan, Tartakower, Grünfeld, Ståhlberg, and Lajos Steiner.[14] In December 1933, Sir Umar took him back to India.[1][4][15] In 1935, he won a match against V. K. Khadilkar, yielding just one draw in ten games.[4][16] After that, he was never heard of by the chess world again.[1][4][15] Reuben Fine wrote of him:[17]
[edit] Later lifeFatima, another servant in Sir Umar's household, had won the British Ladies Championship in 1933 by a remarkable three-point margin, scoring ten wins, one draw, and no losses.[1][18] She said that Sultan Khan, upon his return to India, felt as though he had been freed from prison.[19] In the damp English climate, he had been continually afflicted with malaria, colds, influenza, and throat infections, often arriving to play with his neck swathed in bandages.[20][21] Sir Umar died in 1944, leaving Sultan Khan a small farmstead, where he lived for the rest of his life.[4][20][16] Ather Sultan, his eldest son, recalled that he would not coach his children at chess, telling them that they should do something more useful with their lives.[20] Sultan Khan died of tuberculosis in Sargodha, Pakistan (the same district where he had been born) on April 25, 1966.[4][16][22] [edit] Chess strengthIn his brief but meteoric career, Sultan Khan rose to the top of the chess world, playing on even terms with the world's best players. By Arpad Elo's calculation, his playing strength during his five-year peak was equivalent to an Elo rating of 2530.[23] Another assessment system, Chessmetrics, calculates that his highest rating was 2699, number seven in the world, in November 1932.[24] His highest rank was number six in the world, albeit with a slightly lower rating, in May 1933, behind only Alekhine, Kashdan, Flohr, Capablanca, and Euwe, and ahead of such giants as Aron Nimzowitsch and Akiba Rubinstein.[25] Today FIDE, the World Chess Federation, often awards the Grandmaster title to players with Elo ratings of 2500 and above.[26] In 1950, when FIDE first awarded the titles of International Grandmaster and International Master, Sultan Khan had not played for 15 years. Although FIDE awarded titles to some long-retired players who had distinguished careers earlier in their lives, such as Rubinstein and Carlos Torre, it never awarded any title to Sultan Khan.[27] Hooper and Whyld write of him:[28]
[edit] Notable gamesProbably Sultan Khan's most famous game is his win as White against Capablanca at Hastings 1930-31:[29] Sultan Khan won this crushing victory as Black against the Russo-Belgian player Victor Soultanbeieff at Liège 1930:[30] In this game from Liège 1930, long-time American champion Frank Marshall (Black) tries to add to his long list of brilliancies, but Sultan Khan defends coolly.[31] His biographer calls his play "a wonderful example of sang-froid under pressure".[32] [edit] References
[edit] External links
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