T&T’s Alan-Sa­far Ra­moutar is now the high­est rat­ed chess play­er in Eng­lish-Speak­ing Caribbean. The Trin­bag­on­ian chess play­er reached a FIDE rat­ing of 2400!

The 18-year-old In­ter­na­tion­al Mas­ter (IM) left T&T four months ago seek­ing Eu­ro­pean chess ex­pe­ri­ence and to earn a sec­ond Grand Mas­ter (GM) norm. He has been play­ing in Ser­bia, and Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina.

Ra­moutar’s most re­cent tour­na­ment was the 19th edi­tion of the Bosnia Pre­mier League in Bosnia and Herze­gov­ina. He was in­vit­ed by GM Ibro Sar­ic to play on board three for the team “SK Bje­las­ni­ca Pazaric” in a round-robin tour­na­ment where he col­lect­ed six points from nine games.

He de­feat­ed GM Ne­nad Fercec (Croa­t­ia) and GM Mio­drag Sav­ic (Ser­bia) which helped his team to place third in the fi­nal stand­ings. In ad­di­tion, he was the play­er with the high­est num­ber of points on his team.

Based on Ra­moutar’s per­for­mances abroad, he was able to ob­tain a new rat­ing of 2400 which makes him the high­est rat­ed play­er in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean.

When asked how it feels to be the high­est rat­ed play­er in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, Alan said: “It is a great feel­ing for my­self to know that I am the strongest chess play­er from the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean and al­so it is great feel­ing to know that I am push­ing my coun­try high­er on the world FIDE rank­ings.”

Ra­moutar loves chess be­cause “there is al­ways some­thing new to learn in the game and chess is a game that brings peo­ple from all parts of the world to­geth­er.”

His ad­vice for up­com­ing chess play­ers who want to reach a high lev­el in chess is to make sure to “love the game and then work as hard as you can". He added: "At the end of the day, if I did not en­joy chess, I would not be able to reach this far."

T&T Chess As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA) pres­i­dent Son­ja John­son was very ex­cit­ed about the news say­ing:” Alan-Sa­far con­tin­ues to be an in­spi­ra­tion for chess play­ers lo­cal­ly. His pas­sion, de­ter­mi­na­tion and com­mit­ment to work­ing hard has sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tributed to his be­ing the high­est-rat­ed play­er in the Caribbean re­gion and puts him well on his path to be­com­ing a FIDE Grand Mas­ter!”

Ra­moutar is plan­ning to en­ter a few more tour­na­ments to de­feat some more Grand Mas­ters be­fore re­turn­ing home to his fam­i­ly, friends and the chess com­mu­ni­ty next month.

Ra­moutar was named "Play­er of the Year" for both the se­nior and ju­nior cat­e­gories at the TTCA's an­nu­al prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny held at the Preysal Sec­ondary School in Jan­u­ary.

Last sea­son which was dis­rupt­ed by the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic, he won win­ning the Re­turn to the Board Open ahead of Fide Mas­ter (FM) Mar­cus Joseph, Ryan Harp­er and Joshua John­son.