As a Grob aficianado, I laugh.

Hmmm Tal name still keeps being mentioned.... #66 was an attempt to move him to 2nd place.

Claude Bloodgood had at one point the second highest USCF rating...

Since no one laughed or commented, I'll explain the joke.  British GM Danny Gormally slugged Levon Aronian once in a fight over the beautiful WIM Arianne Caoili.

If we're talking attackers of that sort, I believe Pal Benko punched Fischer once in a fight over who got to use Bisguier as their second.  Also, GM Zurab Azmaiparashvili allegedly headbutted a guard who was trying to prevent him from reaching the stage at an FIDE function.

What exactly does it mean to be an attacker in chess?  Pieces are always attacking something, even if empty squares.  Everyone who doesn't create threats just sits passively waiting for their opponent to finish the game.  I assume this means people who create wonderful combinations that seem crazy at first glance, and sometimes are.  Is it someone who create so many threats that they need not worry about defense as much?

An attacker aims to mate the enemy king from the get-go instead of trying slower more positional methods like a minority attack or exploiting a queenside pawn majority.

Those games were all fake.

Claude Bloodgood's rating came about because he was only playing players in a fixed group (i.e. prison) over and over.  The same thing happened in Myanmar a few years back.  The Myanmar players played each other on a regular basis, but didn't play with players from outside the country, so the best players there saw their ratings shoot up to GM levels, even though they couldn't achieve GM norms.  It's a side effect of how FIDE and USCF calculate their Elo ratings.  The ratings are probably accurate within the respective pools, but the pools have to play against each other for the ratings to adjust for the relative strength of the two pools.  Put simply, Claude Bloodgood was a big fish in a very small pond.

Incidentally, Bator Sambuev had a Canadian CFC Elo rating of 2753 last year for similar reasons.

I'd possibly disagree with those who've mentioned Nezhmetdinov. A quality of the great attackers is knowing when to attack, and he probably wasn't as good at that as the very best, although he's of course phenominal.

I'll admit I'm not qualified to answer though, so I'm quite possibly wrong.

EDIT: Oops, I see Smyslovfan got there before me.

fissionfowl wrote:

I'd possibly disagree with those who've mentioned Nezhmetdinov. A quality of the great attackers is knowing when to attack, and he probably wasn't as good at that as the very best, although he's of course phenominal.

I'll admit I'm not qualified to answer though, so I'm quite possibly wrong.

My thought is that, if he was better than Tal, he'd have a wcc or 2 to prove it, along with records for wins etc, rivaling Tal's....but he doesn't....

Nezhmetdinov was a bit of giant killer beating Tal, Spassky, Bronstein, Geller and Polugaevsky in sometimes brilliant games.  He wasn't consistent though, and had more trouble with positional players like Petrosian or Smyslov.

His win over Polugaevsky at Sochi is in the running for the most brilliant game of all time (24...Rxf4!!):

What about a probably forgotten player: Klaus Junge (who beat even Alekhine in two of his games attacking)! (War is cruel. Maybe Germany lost a future World Champion with the death of Klaus Junge!)

Notice Tal still found a way to defeat the positional players.....all the way to the wcc....I saw a game where Tal demolished Karpov....Karpov being both defensive and positional, was absolutely lambasted by Tal in a blitz game. Tal still employed dazzling combinations against Karpov's defense...I don't think I need to talk up Karpov do I ?

Paul Morphy

I won't trust Alekhine. Hübner found out that Alekhine made already PR for himself. He used his analysis to let his games shine bighter ... Hübner studied old chess reports like "Wiener Schachzeitung" where he found many games of Alekhine had a different move order or even ended in a different way!

Tal himself stated after his WCC win (far too early) that his sacrifices were not always correct. On board it's very difficult to prove this. So he made it possible for Botvinnik to win the re-match!

For combination Kurt Richter was very famous! But if there was no combination Kurt Richter was often lost ...

Rustam Kamsky also tried to hit Nigel Short during a match between Short and Gata Kamsky. He thought that Short was getting inside information from Gata's team, and Short had also said some rather choice things at the board. John Fedorowicz also apparently hit Andras Andorjan, who had beaten him after drawing all of his earlier games. And Blackburne was also known for getting into fistfights.

Kasparov

Paul Morphy is my favorite always! I just saw that he had the highest percentage of check mates. One of the greatest attackers all time..

nice post!

That percentage means nothing.

Of course, everyone here neglects Alekhine, his attacking games in volume were the best in chess history. Tal was the flashiest, but his sacrifices were not always sound. I hate amateurs who say Mikhail Tal was the best attacker ever.