Yogesh Raut

Yogesh Raut
Noted subjects	Psychology, Film, General
Current college	Berkeley (2007-)
Past colleges	University of Southern California (2005-7), Stanford (2001-5)
High school	IMSA
Stats	HDWhite • NAQT

Yogesh Raut is a longtime West Coast quizbowl personality who earned his high school diploma at IMSA, his bachelor's degree in psychology at Stanford, playing successfully alongside Eric Smith, his master's in film at USC, and is currently doing graduate work at Berkeley.

High School Career

Yogesh was a star player who is unquestionably among the best players of his time in Illinois (if not, in fact, the best). In 2000 and 2001 he was selected to be a member of Team Illinois, which represented the state at the Panasonic Academic Challenge. The 2000 team finished fourth, while the 2001 team failed to advance from the semifinals. The 2001 team also participated in the 2001 NSC.

During his three years at IMSA, the Titans won the State title twice (1999 & 2001). In 2000, while favored to win, they were knocked out in the quarterfinals by an up and coming Stevenson team. He graduated just before the IHSSBCA began awarding All-State honors to players, though he certainly would have won two or three of these awards had the awards been around at that time.

Akin to "The Curse of the Bambino", Yogesh's senior year marked IMSA's sixth state title in seven years, and their eighth overall. The team has not even qualified for the State Championship Tournament since Yogesh graduated.

College Career

Yogesh played for four years at Stanford, earning a number of laurels, including being on the fourth-place 2005 ICT team. He then pursued a master's at USC in film, competing on the quizbowl team there.

Yogesh was erroneously awarded the neg prize from Aztlan Cup 2006, which has baffled all quizbowl historians, since (1) Yogesh was not even the neg champion on his team; (2) according to UCLA's own final official stats, posted on their club's website, Yogesh had 9 negs in the tournament (the fourth-highest total) while another player had 18; and (3) hastily hand-written tournament statistics led to the postponement of the neg prize, and it was ultimately awarded at USC's own Ghetto Warz III tournament a month later, which should have been more than enough time to calculate the actual neg champion. Due to these factors, Yogesh unsurprisingly regarded this as an intentional and calculated public humiliation.

Yogesh maintains a blog, The Wrong Box, where he regularly writes about film, and less often about quizbowl.