Alexander Shabalov

Who is Alexander Shabalov?

Alexander Shabalov is an American chess grandmaster. He is a four-time winner of the United States Chess Championship, with his most recent title coming in 2007.

He was born in Latvia, and like his fellow Latvians Alexei Shirov and Mikhail Tal he is known for courting complications even at the cost of objective soundness. As of the January 2013 rating supplement Shabalov had a United States Chess Federation rating of 2657, ranking him 18th best among American chess players. Shabalov's World Chess Federation rating of 2578 places him in the world's top 300 active players.

Shabalov regularly lectured chess players of all ages at the House of Chess, a store that he ran at the Ross Park Mall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, until it closed in mid-2007.