As winner of the World Junior Championship, Shaked was invited to play in the super-grandmaster event in Tillburg, Holland, a field which included world champion Garry Kasparov, future world champion Vladimir Kramnik, and super-grandmasters Peter Svidler, Peter Leko, Alexei Shirov, Judit Polgár and Michael Adams. In late 1997, Shaked competed in the FIDE World Chess Championship, winning his first round match before losing in the second round. In 1998, Shaked advanced to the semifinals of the United States Championship, defeating grandmaster Boris Gulko before losing to eventual champion Nick de Firmian. Having entered college at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County on a full chess scholarship in 1998, he helped lead UMBC to the 1998 Pan-American Intercollegiate Championship as his team's top-rated player. He eventually transferred to the University of Arizona where he graduated with a degree in computer science in 2002.