Me Sultan Khan

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Malik Mir Sultan Khan (* 1905 in Mittha Tawana in Punjab , † April 25, 1966 in Sargodha in Pakistan ) was one of the strongest chess players in Asia in the first half of the 20th century and temporarily one of the ten best chess players in the world.

Mir Sultan Khan was born in a village in the Sargodha district of what is now Pakistan 's Punjab Province . At that time, the Punjab was a province of British India . The future chess master only knew the rules of the Indian game of chess and could not read any European language when he came to England in 1928 as a servant to the Indian Colonel Nawab Sir Malik Umar Hayat Khan (1875-1944) .

Only here did he familiarize himself with the European rules of chess and learn about the double step of the pawn . He didn't know anything about the opening theory . But he was a natural, his game was based only on intuition . That is why he was one of the most notable players in chess history. In England he was tutored by the masters William Winter and Frederick Dewhurst Yates . As early as 1929 he won the English championship in Ramsgate straight away . He was able to repeat this success in 1932 and 1933.

Between 1930 and 1933 he successfully took part in international championship tournaments. In 1931 and 1933 he was the best English participant in the heavily occupied tournaments of Hastings . With the English team he took part in the Chess Olympiads in 1930 , 1931 and 1933 . He beat José Raúl Capablanca , Akiba Rubinstein and Salo Flohr , among others .

He won a competition against Savielly Tartakower in 1931 with 6.5: 5.5. Against Flohr he lost 2.5: 3.5 in 1932.

He reached his best historical rating of 2699 in November 1933. He was one of the 10 best players in the world at that time.

Sultan Khan returned to India with his colonel in December 1933. He had another competition with the reigning Indian national champion W. Khaldikar, which he won with superiority (+9 = 1 −0). Then he disappeared from the chess stage as quickly as he had appeared. His patron died in 1944, leaving him a small estate in the Sargodha district. After the partition of India and the Punjab region in 1947, his homeland belonged to the newly formed state of Pakistan. His later years appeared to be calm, and Mir Sultan Khan died on his estate at the age of 61.

literature

  • Richard Nevil Coles: Mir Sultan Khan . British Chess Magazine, St. Leonards-on-Sea 1965.
  • Gisbert Jacoby: Mir Sultan Khan . ChessBase Magazine No. 5, March 1988, pp. 54-62.

Web links

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  1. Bobby Ang: Chess Piece: Asia's First GM? ( Memento from September 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), article at www.indochess.com (English)
  2. Mir Sultan Khan's results at the Chess Olympiads on olimpbase.org (English)
  3. Daniel King: Sultan Khan. The fascinating story of a humble Indian servant who stunned the chess world New in Chess, 2020
  4. Chessmetrics Player Profile April 22, 2006 (English)