In an international chess career of less than five years (1929–33), he won the British Chess Championship three times in four tries (1929, 1932, 1933), and had tournament and match results that put him among the top ten players in the world. Sir Umar then brought him back to his homeland, where he gave up chess and returned to his humble life. He has been called "perhaps the greatest natural player of modern times". He was generally recognised as a grandmaster, but when FIDE took over control of chess, he was forgotten. At the FIDE 1948 meeting, a number of former players were given retrospective titles, but not Khan.