Help make Sultan Khan a Grandmaster- a personal request

Hi all,

I am posting this because the issue is important to me- I feel it is a grave injustice for this not to have happened already.

Here is the link from Chessbase.com to sign the petition:

https://en.chessbase.com/post/help-to-make-sultan-khan-a-grandmaster

For those who are not familiar with Mir Sultan Khan, here is his Wikipedia entry link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_Sultan_Khan

I would really appreciate it if everyone reading this would be motivated to sign the petition, and to pass this information along to their chess playing friends. Thanks!

Incredible, and many others deserve it.

I will do what I can if it helps.

Well done. 😉

@paul-leggett said
Hi all,

I am posting this because the issue is important to me- I feel it is a grave injustice for this not to have happened already.

Here is the link from Chessbase.com to sign the petition:

https://en.chessbase.com/post/help-to-make-sultan-khan-a-grandmaster

For those who are not familiar with Mir Sultan Khan, here is his Wikipedia entry link:

https://en ...[text shortened]... ed to sign the petition, and to pass this information along to their chess playing friends. Thanks!

Will do Paul.
It would be a pleasure.

It is not always possible to right the wrongs of the past: But steps toward that direction are things that we should find worthwhile.

Hi Paul,

Have voted yes but also noted and added the coincidence between this
ChessBase appeal and the release of Danny King's book on Sultan Khan.

@greenpawn34

Maybe the book (accuracy notwithstanding) educated someone, which led to the drive? Hard to say.

I was introduced to the games of Sultan Khan by I. A. Horowitz, and later GM Andy Soltis in his book on the Stonewall Attack. My very first OTB tournament win in a USCF rated tournament came from playing the Stonewall Attack by following Khan.

I once read (and I may be garbling this horribly) where Khan was playing in at tournament in the UK, and his Maharajah invited all the players to a dinner at his residence in their honor.

All of the players were expecting Khan to be sharing the meal with them, and were instead very embarrassed when they learned Khan was the servant serving them their meals.

I have wondered how Khan felt (was his serving merely a sign of hospitality, misinterpreted by the Guests?), but the story affected me very emotionally when I first read it. It still does, really.

Hi Paul,

A member of the family is not too happy with the book and wants it recalled.

"These are just a few of the more salient misconceptions in King’s book that I have
identified. Unfortunately, it contains many more inaccuracies, from the year of
Sultan’s birth to the cause of his death. Frankly, it is unbelievable that such a
historically inaccurate work has been published and, in all fairness, the author and
publisher both owe Sultan’s family an apology as well as an immediate
recall/revision of this book."

https://www.chess.com/blog/atiyabsultan/sultan-khan-by-daniel-king-a-granddaughters-review

Hi Duchess64,

Agree Nezhmetdinov was a great player and better than a lot of G.M.'s.

But I'm still back in the old days when the GM title only went to players
who got into the candidates (it is how Fischer got his ) So there are only about 100 GM's.

Todays there are approx 1,500 and the norm method were you can carry
norms over from tournament to tournament over a period of years seems wrong.

Back to Nez.

It was the shortage of tournaments to become a G.M. that hurt him.
That and how hard it was (especially compared today) to become a G.M.

From 1954 to 1959, only three Soviet players were awarded the G.M. title:
Korchnoi, Spassky and Tal.

There were possibly off the board reasons why he was not trusted outside
the USSR. It sounds like he liked a good drink and when he got drunk....

"When Nezhmetdinov drank he had all kinds of psychoses, he'd lie down under a tram or do some other dumb thing."

Interview by Sosonko was interviewing Ratmir Holmov in his book: ' "Smart Chip from St.Petersburg"

There is also this article: Why Rashid Nezhmetdinov Never Became a Grandmaster?

https://www.chess.com/blog/Spektrowski/why-rashid-nezhmetdinov-never-became-a-grandmaster.

@paul-leggett said
@greenpawn34

Maybe the book (accuracy notwithstanding) educated someone, which led to the drive? Hard to say.

I was introduced to the games of Sultan Khan by I. A. Horowitz, and later GM Andy Soltis in his book on the Stonewall Attack. My very first OTB tournament win in a USCF rated tournament came from playing the Stonewall Attack by following Khan.

I once r ...[text shortened]... e Guests?), but the story affected me very emotionally when I first read it. It still does, really.

Hi Paul, also greenpawn34 and Duchess,

something to take into account here is that he is a servant to a Maharajah. The closest English equivalent is "King", ironically enough. The Queen's ladies-in-waiting are all serious nobility. I don't know what Queen's ladies-in-waiting's jobs entail, but in Mir Khan's case it's not that he's doing a menial job, but who he is doing it for that counts.

Regarding Paul's story about his being the servant at the chess players' reception, he can have regarded it as an honour that his friends had been invited as guests and that he was doing the serving, I don't know, but the possibilities open unless demonstrated otherwise.

I haven't read King's book (I have read his book on the Najdorf, which is a pretty reasonable introduction) and would just say that being a good chess writer is different from being a good historian or biographer, these require other skills and not jumping to conclusions about social status based on a job title.

The post that was quoted here has been removed

Amen!