Greatest Attacking Chess Players Of All Time

"Who is the greatest with the intiative Nezmetdinov or Kasparov? Who would be in a list of top 10 greatest players with the intiative?Please reply!"

Nezhmetdinov qualified for a few Soviet Championships and scored rather badly in them, usually quite big minus scores. He was simply never strong enough to be anywhere close to be top ten at any point in time. So as attacking player or with the initiative or on his best day etc he could never be compared to greats like Kasparov, who was clearly strongest in the world for a couple of decades. The best attacking players and the best players are probably almost the same, maybe with a few exceptions, but Nezhmetdinov just wasn't strong enough.

Check out the "Tiblisi Tiger's" early games.

Check out ANY elite GM's early games. They all learned to attack. Petrosian was a competent attacker, but he wasn't one of the greatest. Fischer and Karpov were excellent attackers, but they weren't predominantly known as attacking players. 

I'm constantly amazed that people focus so much energy on the 1960s as if that was the Golden Age of Chess. It was a great time, but the 1990s-2016 has produced far more compelling examples of great attackers. 

Take a look at some of these lists! Apart from Kasparov, many of these lists contain NO players who were active after 1980.

Velimirovic must be worth a mention. Known as the Serbian Tal, he pioneered the Yugoslav Attack against the Sicilian Dragon. In some books this system bears his name. 

[COMMENT DELETED] Posted immediately above comment twice by mistake.

The games today are not as good as the old 21/2 hrs per 40 moves with adjournments,like back in the 50s and 60s.  This was chess's greatest period.

Rudolph Spielman, Ossip Bernstein, and Adolph Anderson are all great attacking players....as were Leonid Stein, Bronstein, Spassky, Nehzemetdinov..and Fischer..

The 4 greatest attacking players Alekhine+Tal = Kasparov...and then there was Morphy....these are imho the 4  greatest attacking players of all time...

Spielman is important because without his ideas even Tal might have been "TAL"

Yes, Spielmann is important. But he's hardly one of the ten greatest attacking players of all time. He himself considered Alekhine to be miles ahead of him. As he said, he could find the same tactics that Alekhine could find, but he couldn't get into those positions. 

It's important to remember the greats of the past, but it's disrespectful to today's great players to suggest that they aren't as good as the great attackers of yesteryear. 

Today's players face much tougher defenders than at any point in chess history. When the attacks work, they are incredible. Today's best attackers, including Anand, Nakamura, Aronian, Ivanchuk, So, and others, are some of the very best attackers of all time. But the greatest of them all was at his peak about twenty years ago, Garry Kasparov. 

Btw, Bobby Fischer was one of the greatest players of all time, but he was never known as a great attacking player. He was considered to be much more of a positional player in the vein of Capablanca than an attacking player the way Geller, Tal, or Alekhine were. 

I always loved that quote.

Which does remind me of a story.

I had a very good friend (now deceased) who was almost the exact same rating I was.

I am mostly a positional & endgame player myself. He on the other hand, was wild sac-ing attacking player. Completely insane attacks.

Now when I first started playing him, I assumed I would be better positionally. And I was right. But I was shocked to discover, I was better at tactics than he was, too.

So why were we the same rating?? What was he doing, to make up for this?

It took a while before I realized, he was better than me at creating these attacks, out of thin air. More imaginative, I guess.

Frank Marshal

5 years later...

You can't become chess champion of the world if you suck at attacking.

You cannot become a great defender, unless you understand attacking first.