As a member of the United States team, he won the gold medal for the best individual performance on the reserve board at the 41st Chess Olympiad.

[5] In 2016, he competed in the first season of FOX's reality game show Kicking & Screaming, finishing in eighth place with his survivalist partner Caleb Garmany.

[6] Shankland began his rise to prominence in 2008, winning the Pacific Coast Open and the California State Championship.

He made his international debut at the World Youth Chess Championship under-18 section, where he tied for first place with Ivan Saric and Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son, taking home the bronze medal on tiebreak score and earning the title of International Master.

Chess Championship, after first defeating Alexander Onischuk in a playoff game,[10] and then Robert Hess in an Armageddon match.

In the 2011 World Cup, Shankland defeated Hungarian super-grandmaster Peter Leko in the first round, but lost to Abhijeet Gupta in the second.

Shankland won the Northern California International ahead of strong GMs Georg Meier, Alejandro Ramirez, Yury Shulman, and Bartlomiej Macieja.

The Samford is a fellowship given once a year to a promising young American player, providing the funds necessary for the recipient to devote him or herself to chess without being restrained by financial concerns.

[14] Shankland clinched first place at the ZMDI Open in Dresden, Germany, edging out on tiebreak score Mikhailo Oleksienko and Georg Meier.

[18] Following his gold medal in Tromsø, Shankland was promoted to first board of team USA for the World Team Chess Championship, where he played with a performance rating over 2700 and drew against elite players Levon Aronian, Alexander Grischuk, and Boris Gelfand, all of whom were in the top fifteen players worldwide at the time.

[21] In September, 2016, Shankland played as fourth board for the United States at the 42nd Chess Olympiad, where the team earned gold for the first time since 1976.

[23] In December 2017, Shankland was runner-up at Sunway Sitges International Chess Festival, in Sitges (Barcelona, Spain), with a score of 6.0/9 (half a point behind GM Aravinth[24]), after defeating GM Salem Saleh in a blitz chess play-off for the second place.

[27] In January, Shankland finished with 6.5/13 at the Tata Steel Masters, sharing 7th place in what has been called the strongest tournament in the world.