VAIBHAV Raut made right moves while participating for the first time in open international chess tournaments. In three tournaments in Spain, Raut not only increased his ELO ratings with 100 points to touch 2200 mark but also pocketted cash prize of about Rs fifty thousand. In the first tournament Barbera Open at Barcelona, Raut forced tournament top seed GM Perez Mitjans Orelvis of Spain to split point.

 

In the Elllobregat Open Chess tournament players from 40 countries participated. Raut played a couple of draws with higher rated opponents. The last tournament was Sunway Sitges International Chess Festival where he won against Brazil’s IM Molina Roberto Junio and WIM Caglar Sila of Turkey. A second year B.Com student of City Premier College, Vaibhav has represented Maharashtra in DSO national chess tournaments three times winning two golds and one silver. Earlier he was coached by Gurpreet Maras and presently he is being trained by GM Swapnil Dhopade. Vaibhav is son of Dr Jayant Raut, Assistant Professor at YCCE, Nagpur and Vrushali Raut, a teacher at Narayana Vidyalayam.