Who is the greatest attacker in chess history?

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.

Before stating what everyone neglects, you may want to read the previous posts first.

Statistically it is meaningless to compare these players based on just this percentage but it's not "nothing" :)  He stopped playing chess because he couldn't find opponents and he once had reportedly declared that he would play no more matches without giving odds of pawn and move.

This part below is from Wikipedia and very interesting especially Anderrsen's comment about Morphy (it must be the same Anderrsen in that list who comes after Morphy). He says "I win my games in seventy moves but Mr. Morphy wins his in twenty, but that is only natural..."

Today many amateurs think of Morphy as a dazzling combinative player, who excelled in sacrificing his queen and checkmating his opponent a few brilliant moves later. One reason for this impression is that chess books like to reprint his flashy games. There are games where he did do this, but it was not the basis of his chess style. In fact, the masters of his day considered his style to be on the conservative side compared to some of the flashy older masters like La Bourdonnais and Anderssen.

Morphy can be considered the first modern player. Some of his games do not look modern because he did not need the sort of slow positional systems that modern grandmasters use, or that Staunton, Paulsen, and later Steinitz developed. His opponents had not yet mastered the open game, so he played it against them and he preferred open positions because they brought quick success. He played open games almost to perfection, but he also could handle any sort of position, having a complete grasp of chess that was years ahead of his time. Morphy was a player who intuitively knew what was best, and in this regard he has been likened to Capablanca. He was, like Capablanca, a child prodigy; he played quickly and he was hard to beat. In an era before time control was used, Morphy often took less than an hour to make all of his moves, while his opponents would need perhaps 8 hours or more. Löwenthal and Anderssen both later remarked that he was indeed hard to beat since he knew how to defend and would draw or even win games despite getting into bad positions. At the same time, he was deadly when given a promising position. Anderssen especially commented on this, saying that after one bad move against Morphy one might as well resign. "I win my games in seventy moves but Mr. Morphy wins his in twenty, but that is only natural..." Anderssen said, explaining his poor results against Morphy.

I found this link from one of previous posts about the greatest aggressive attacker in chess :D))

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNhTYJGjc2g