Sultan Khan The Underdog
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MikhailTalfan23
Jan 2, 2024
0
#1
Khan was untrained, & defeated many of the world’s top players. Feel free to comment.
Jan 2, 2024
0
#2
Mir Sultan Khan was a very talented Indian Chess (also descended from Chaturanga) player. There were different variants in British India in the 18th and 19th century but pawns couldn't move two spaces on there first move, castling didn't exist (but once/game the king could move like a knight), the "queen" was not nearly so strong, and there were other differences from the European game. By the time he was 21, Khan was recognized as the best player in what is now Pakistan.
Colonel Nawab Sir Umar Hayat Khan, a very rich local landowner, leader of the native militia, and high government official, hired Sultan Khan to help bring western chess to India. After a year of studying European-style chess, he won the first All-India Chess Championship, wining eight games and drawing one. Sir Umar took him to England, paid several of England's best players to play in a tournament with him (Khan did poorly--no opening theory or endgame technique) and give him lessons. After a few months of training, he shocked the British chess world by winning the British Chess Championship.
Then he "disappeared", returning to India with a trunk full of chess books. A year later Sir Umar brought him back to Europe and over the next couple of years he entered several strong European tournaments and played for England at three Chess Olympiads. He had great success, holding his own against the world's best players, winning two more British Chess Championships, and winning a game against Capablanca.
At the end of 1933 Sir Umar returned to India, Sultan Khan went home (saying he felt like he was being "freed from prison" by getting away from the climate in England) and put the money he made into improving his family's farm. He gave up chess entirely (refusing to teach the game to his children, telling them to do something more useful with their lives) and spent his life at home as a prosperous landowner.
Sultan Khan wasn't really an untutored Indian servant that was brought to Europe and blossomed overnight into a world-class chess player. It was just that no one in Europe knew anything about chess in India, and he was never heard from in the chess world again after his brief career that created the myth of the mysterious prodigious Oriental chess genius.
