Meet the Legends: Sultan Mir Khan

Considered the Strongest Asian Player of the 1930s, Sultan Khan was a Chess player from British India and later was a citizen of Pakistan.  Sultan learned Chess at a very early age from his father.

Sultan Khan was considered the strongest player of Punjab by the age of 21. Then, Sir Umar, a Colonel, took Sultan under his wing to teach him the European version of the game, and his training worked wonders for Sultan as he won the All-Indian Championship in 1928, scoring 8 wins, 1 draw, and no losses. 

1929 was a mixed year for Sultan as Sir Umar took him to London to take part in a training tournament, but he fared pretty poorly as he finished last along with William Winter and Frederick Yates. Post that tournament, Winters and Yates prepared along with Sultan for the British Chess Championship. Sultan shocked everyone when he won the tournament and returned to India soon after. 

Sultan returned to Europe in 1939, and that was the start of a brilliant career. This period for Sultan began with wins over the World’s leading players. He went on to win the British Championships in 1932 and 1933.

At the Chess Olympiads, he played thrice first board for England. He scored nine wins, four draws, and four losses in Hamburg in 1930 and then registered eight wins, seven draws, and two losses in Prague in 1931. He had a difficult tournament in Folkestone in 1933, where he won four and lost four games. 

Sir Umar took Sultan back to India in 1993, where he won a game against V.K. Khadilkar in 1935. But that was it, the Chess World never heard of him again. 

According to Miss Fatima, another servant of Sir Umar, Sultan felt that he had been freed from prison. In the damp English weather, he was often diagnosed with Malaria, Colds, Influenza, and Throat infections, and he often used to come to games with his neck filled with bandages. After Sir Umar died in 1944, Sultan spent the rest of his life with his family in Sargodha. He did not even train his children in Chess, telling them that they should do something better with their lives. 

At the time he was playing Chess, Sultan had not become a Grandmaster, and it was in 2024 when FIDE posthumously awarded Sultan the Grandmaster title.

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