Interview with Alexander Shabalov
U.S. Championship, January 2003

Interview by Jim Perry

JFP: I understand you are from Latvia and that when you were in Latvia learning chess you had as a chess teacher none other then the great Mikhail Tal. Could you tell us something about this?

Shabalov: Sure. Our houses were basically about two blocks apart. When I started playing serious chess for the first time in my life around age 11, it was very natural that I became his student. We had a lot of one-on-one sessions. That went on for five or six years, while he was still in good health.

Later on I switched to another great grandmaster, Vladimir Bagirov, who was my constant coach. Obviously, it made a big impact on my career and on my playing style. Sometimes people even compare me to Tal, but obviously it's not really fair. There are some similarities. It's pretty much like the Latvian school of chess; it's combinational, with a lot of risk-taking and stuff. I have some qualities like this, I think.

JFP: Did you participate in Pioneer's Palaces chess tournaments?

Shabalov: Oh, yeah. That was the mainstream and, just on the side, there was Tal who was taking care of me and Shirov -- we were obviously talented and Tal was very kind, devoting his time to young people willingly. We always participated in all his camps before important tournaments. The impact is still there. Shirov has been in the top ten in the world for the last decade, and here is my big success [Shabalov is of course referring to the fact that he had just won the 2003 U.S. Chess Championship].

JFP: Was chess always your calling, so to speak?

Shabalov: In the former Soviet Union, as you know, it was pretty much true that everybody knew how to play chess. But at a young age, you share this interest with some other sports. For example, I was playing basketball a lot and I was doing skiing almost on a professional level and it's a little hard to stop. Then at the age of 11, when I won the Latvian junior championship, I realized that chess was going to be the dominant part of my life for some time. Then I won the U-16 Championship of the Soviet Union in 1982. From then on I progressed upwards all the time.

JFP: What is the one thing you miss about chess in Latvia?

Shabalov: It was just such an integrated part of the culture -- everybody knew everything so you could meet a random person on the street and he would be so well informed about what is going on in the world of chess that you would be amazed. That is not the case here in the United States. Obviously the random person here on the street may know who Kasparov is and the stuff about computers, but besides that there is probably nothing that such a random person would know. I don't know that things are going to change in the very near future, but obviously the AF4C [America's Foundation for Chess] is doing a great job trying to integrate chess into American culture and we should be as supportive as possible.

JFP: How do you feel the professional opportunities for chess players here in the United States compare to the situation in the former Soviet Union?

Shabalov: Professionally, it's actually very nice here. It's probably the best situation in the world, not just compared to the Soviet Union, but even compared to Europe. If you want to make a living at chess, you can do it in the United States very nicely. It obviously involves teaching students, teaching kids, camps, probably writing books and stuff. I don't do this because I feel that I'm still young enough to just pl ay chess. The situation is like this: if you want to live on chess alone, you can do it here in America. It's an opportunity.