The Most Underrated Player in History: Mir Sultan Khan

Hello everyone, today we are back with a very quality post! We'll be covering the most underrated chess player of all time: Mir Sultan Khan (No, it's not your 9-year-old cousin who uses ChatGPT against innocent 1100s...)

I'm going to show his story and how he was one of the greatest players of his time and possibly the most underrated player of all time. I hope you're ready!

Who is Sultan Khan?

We'll be going back all the way to 1903 In Modern Day Pakistan, Where Sultan Khan was born and was the son of a Muslim landlord and preacher.

At the age of 9, he learned Indian Chess, and by age 21 he was considered one of the best, if not the BEST in Punjab.

He travelled with Colonel Nawab Sir Umar Hayat Khan (Sir Umar) who took him to London in 1929.

Before we talk about his experience in London, In 1929 he won the Indian National Championship, he's not bad at ALL.

Sadly, in a London Training Tournament, he placed second to last, but the 2 people in front of him William Winter and Frederick Yates helped him train for the British National Championship that was to be held that month, and to everyone's surprise, he won! He went back to India with Sir Umar.

He returned to Europe in May 1930 where he began an international chess career that included wins over many of the world's leading players. His best results were second to Savielly Tartakower at Liège 1930; third at Hastings 1930–31 (+5−2=2) behind future World Champion Max Euwe and former World Champion José Raúl Capablanca; fourth at Hastings 1931–32; fourth at Bern 1932 (+10−3=2); and a tie for third with Isaac Kashdan at London 1932, behind World Champion Alexander Alekhine and Salo Flohr. Sultan Khan again won the British Championship in 1932 and 1933. In matches he narrowly defeated Tartakower in 1931 (+4−3=5) and narrowly lost to Flohr in 1932 (+1−2=3).

Game 1: Mattison

Game 2: Marshall

An Amazing Game with many sacrifices and visions! I hope you would agree!

Meme to describe this game:

Puzzle:

Game 3: Capablanca

This was an interesting game to say the least... There was so much shuffling and this was a very long game, This was a game where Sultan Khan proved his great ability to defend.

Black sacrificed 2 rooks for a queen and those 2 rooks combined with the bishop pair went on to dominate the game and completely destroy capablanca's position and any chance of attack.

Meme to describe this game:

Puzzle:

Conclusion

We can all agree that Sultan Khan had some very good games and can be considered one of the greatest players of his time, Even beating Capablanca.

But not all of us might agree Sultan Khan is the most underrated player of all time, after all, It is very opinion-based and not everyone has the same opinion but everyone should respect each other's opinion.

If you don't think Sultan Khan is the most underrated of all time, Who do you think is? Let me down in the comments below, and I'll see you next time with another quality post!

(Also, please give me tips on how I should annotate games that I didn't play for my next blogs, I don't really know how to analyze or annotate games that I didn't play lol)