Aggressive or passive

I find myself playing passive in most of my games. I like closed and postional games but can also play tactical games as well. Well my question is are you a aggressive or passive player? I tend to play passive because when I play defense first I always play better. ( let my oppenent attack first) Does anybody else feel or play this way? Last, does anybody know  any Gm's that play passive chess?

Timeless

I play this way. You should study the games of Petrosian.

For some reason I am better at seeing my opponent's attacking possibilities than I am at recognizing my own. Like Petrosian, I sometimes make moves which defend against my opponent's attack which is several moves down the road.

Does anybody know of a good book on Petrosian's games?

I am not sure if I am aggresive or passive player, but I surely like to have initiative and would often sacrafice material to gain attacking chances.

I play passively.  I simply wait for a mistake and then take advantage of it.  My style would most be like Petrosian.

When I'm Black I'm slightly more passive unless White is very passive...maybe the nature of the openings? 

As White, I'm likely to look for tactical opportunities, which are often clever plans with huge holes in them.

I also like to play more positional games, waiting for my opponent to over-extend him/herself.  Lately, though, I've been making my way through Vukovic's Art of Attack in Chess and playing a lot of beginners OTB so my latest games are a bit unusual for my style.

I like to have the initiative and I like my pieces to be active, however I don't like to attack if it will leave me with any kind of weakness, the only time I might not block before I punch is when I can get a lasting initiative which I'll gladly sacrifice for.

I don't think it's fair to call any GMs play passive.  Petrosian might like defensive positional chess but not passive, slip up against him and you'll get squished by all kinds of active play / latent energy of his position, passive is a bad word in chess :)

I don't think anybody prefers a passive position to an active one, but the more positional players wouldn't want to sacrifice a pawn for just a few extra turns of development, so they are less willing to make a concession for an all out attack. However, they may on the other hand sac a pawn to get long term positional compensation.

I have a preference for positional play, and am very comfortable in most slow positions, but still I do what the position screams for. If I have to be dynamic and concrete, that's what I have to do if I'm given the chance. But there are many times where you may have an advantage and you can either cash it in concretely, but it would require sifting through tons of tactics, or maintain the advantage and keep building up, and I would want to build up. Personally what I don't like is having a safe edge but in order to convert the edge you have to ultimately complicate the position and take risk. Yes the one with the more active position should benefit from it, but only if they don't make a mistake in the complications, and that's what I'm afraid of.

I find that so strange, because to me it's always easier to see what I can do, rather than what my opponent can do. I often put more care into my plan and less effort into my opponents, subconciously assuming that they're plan is simpler than mine when in reality I'm not fully looking at what his plan is.

The same goes for defense against an attack. You need to anticipate all of your opponents options and only then look for yours. The attacker just looks for his forced win, then plays it.

Which frequently results in being mated before you even know what happened , by the way.  I talk from painful experience.  I seem unwilling to respect my opponent's plan.

Ozzie's post reminds me of how he says he feels when the opponent begins a kingside pawnstorm...versus when he makes a kingside pawn storm against the opponent.  On both sides of this coin, if I remember correctly, he feels insecure about his position. 

Good memory. I don't push my kingside pawns for attack (in a non-closed position) because I don't want to make my king's position less secure. And when my opponent does the same thing, I first and foremost look to how they could prosecute the attack.

But it's not like I lose all of these games, keep in mind! ;-)

Can anybody post games of petosian for me please. I like to counter attack

I'd search Google, there must be a ton.

He's not your guy for counterattacking. I might try Korchnoi for that.

Thanks

Over 1900 games in this collection:

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=16149

Never play passive chess, you will get slaughtered

I believe there's a difference between passive and defensive play.

Chess is a competition and the object is to win; you cannot win by playing passively, since you will not exploit the opportunity to take the initiative. You simply wait around hoping your opponent will make a glaring blunder - otherwise, you're basically headed for a draw when you may have won.

Defensive play is essential when being attacked; if your play is passive, you will get slaughtered as Sceadungen mentioned above.

I beg to differ about being slaughtered with passive play

Actually it's impossible by definition to beat someone with passive play.  Now if they play passively and you drop a piece when suddenly they play active to win that's a different story where basically you beat yourself and then they jumped at the chance.

"It is to Petrosian's advantage that his opponents never know when he is suddenly going to play like Tal" - Spassky

Positional chess isn't about being passive, but stopping all possible counter play before striking -- the ultimate success for a positional player is to reduce his opponent to passivity.  Defensive chess is about precise calculation during an attack -- neither ever aim to be passive.  If you tried playing passively against a legendary positional player like Petrosian, Petrosian wouldn't waste any time blowing you off the board, take the following game where Petrosian sacrifices his queen and wins in only 21 moves.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1104948