who was the most aggressive chessplayer

mr. bean?! :D

You can change your name one time only as far as I know...

Clearly the most aggressive chessplayer is some Class C player who fires off wild gambits every game becuase that's how they beat all the beginners :)...

People continue to confuse "most aggressive" with "best tactician".

Many of the most aggressive players aren't nearly as good at tactics as elite GMs. They only see tactics going their way, not their opponents' good defensive moves. 

None of these IMs or GMs are the most aggressive player of all time. The most aggressive players are all well below 2300 strength because they can't defend. 

What's even more comedic is when people replace "aggressive" with "strong player." You see this when people make claims like Fischer was the best attacker ever... without reading this topic I'm sure it's already happened more than a few times here.

Tigran Petrosian.

Bobby Fischer

Greco !

Janowsky, Spielman, Andersen, Morphy, Tal are other possible choices. 
Janowsky was famous for going crazy and sacrificing everything rather than drawing a game. Got completely destroyed by Lasker for this reason. 

Then let's just say crazy woodpusher to them than 'aggressive'.

Tal must be one of course but agree with goldendog's excellent choices. Alehkine must be a contender.

One of the best strategists ever in my opinion.

rashid nez

The poster's choice shows a lot more about his definition of "aggressive" than his opinion of the player he named.

I just don't see Tal as being agressive when he consistently goes for the most solid openings and feels most comfortable with his opponent's counterplay eliminated. It's not his fault when an exchange sac is simply the best move in the position.

Now while he may not sacrifice pawns in the opening, I do see him do that in the middlegame. And his play certainly is very active. But I think Korchnoi might be considered more agressive, playing crazy moves like f5 in the opening and constantly sacrificing pawns and unlike 2300 players, doing it accurately. He often responded with the most complicated response on the board. Tal just used his positional prowess to steer toward a winning position and then proved it with a sacrifice.

Not at all, xman. Tal's style was simple: He developed his pieces towards the center, then sacrificed them somewhere!

As Botvinnik and Tal himself pointed out, his sacrifices were frequently unsound. Tal's was a fantastic calculator. His philosophy was that if he couldn't refute a move, neither could his opponent. He didn't worry if a refutation of his sacrifice was found months later. 

Tal was not Steinitz. He sacrificed in order to lead his opponent into a jungle where 2+2=5. His sacrifices were rarely the culmination of deep positional play, they were attempts to bring chaos, (or as Shirov would say) fire to the board.

Obviously players have different ideas about what constitutives an 'aggressive player'. My own definition (and I accept that there may be others) would be of players who are not frightened of charging into unclear (at least OTB), complicated tactical exchanges. Some of those who enter these exchanges (the very most aggressive) are ready to take risks that even Tal might baulk at. Some players eschew this kind of play and prefer quieter strategic games. As I'm sure we all agree this quieter style of play may be just as effective, often more so, in winning games. Those at the latter end of what might be thought of as a continuum I would call 'less aggressive'. One of the most beautiful things about chess is that the individual's style of play (at least of stronger players) inevitably has a personality of its own.