agressive attackingplayers more flexible than positional players?

ok i might get flamed for this but i have talked to a bunch of guys who win alot and they strategy is simple. "if it opens up i win" no matter what opening it is. they are happy about inferior positions as long as its open. any opinions on this from higher rated players? or anyone

if they are just as good at open positions they are just as good. there will always be someone better if you are not carlsen i guess:) i was thinking more about comparing tactical players who prefer open positions and attack all the time they can, against people who play closed openings and aiming for pawnstructures and endgames and stuff

I've got my money on the positional player every time...assuming we're talking about a competent one.

A good positional player, even if he's not a whiz bang attacker, is invariably a good defender.  Against all but the most overwhelming attacks, they're headed to an endgame, where Mr. Positional will be on his home court.

The caveat, I guess, is that my money shifts toward the attacker more and more as time controls get shorter and shorter.

In my opinion you can't be a good attacking player whitout being good positionally.

I agree.

Before you can sac everything for mate you have to get yourself in a position where you can sac.  That requires positional understanding. And so therefore, the question at hand is a logical fallacy: you are mistaking one thing for being two (separate) things.

On a similiar note, questions about tactics vs positional understanding are also pointless: you initaite a tactical sequence that forces the trade of thier Queen for your knight in virtue of your positional understanding (i.e you realise that, in the particular position a knight is inferior to a Queen.)  thus, positional players in virtue of thier positional understanding must also be good tactical players (in the sense that they understand the resulting positions: thus if they can calculate {calculation being the other important factor for being a good tactical player} several lines in any given particualar position they will know which line to persue since their positional understanding allows them to make sense of the end position.

A simple example would be the following:

A purely tactical player might make the mistake in thinking that BxQ is a good move, particually since its check and thus limits the number of White replies. However, the positional player would understand the foolishness of BxQ and would therefore play NxQ (that is assuming of course, his tactical abilility is good enought to allow him to calculate the line.)

So, to conclude a rather long and irrelevant rant: you cant really subdivide the aspects of chess (e.g attack/defence, positional/tactical, etc since they all are deeply interelated and, IMO, inseperable.  

Some of you seem to be confusing tactics with aggression.  You can't be a good positional player without a firm understanding of tactics.  And you can't be a good tactical player without a firm understanding of position.

But you can be aggressive and attacking without either.  You must USE tactics, of course, to be an attacker.  But you don't really have to understand them, or use them well.  And aggression with only limited understanding can still be pretty successful up to...I don't know...1500?  1600?

Put another way, attacking is all about intent.  Position is about understanding.

I've seen plenty of 1200-1600 attacking players.

I don't believe there's any such thing as a positional player below 1800.

"Are attacking players more flexible than defensive or passive players?" might have been more what the OP intended.

i agree with Fiveofswords. i prefer open, attacking positions, but i've had games where i've held off opening it up because i had other advantages and opening up the game would only benefit my opponent. you really have to be able to play both well.

in my club many players study more positional chess, openingstudy and such but not much tactics. others barely know anything about chess at all but really study tactics and tactical patterns, why the tactics worked here and not there and so on. there is a 2000+guy in the club that have never touched a chessbook