why didn't Mikhail Tal play aggressive openings ?

Because he wanted to win - not lose! Most wild gambits are unhealthy and give the opponent an advantage. Tal's opponents were so good that it would mean losing to many games.

Yeah that's maybe true but he didn't want win positionally and most gambits at that time weren't refuted

@1

"kings gambit" ++ Unsound

"instead he played more solid Opening like the ruy lopez"
++ Also Fischer and Kasparov played the Ruy Lopez, which is most aggressive for white.
He did play aggresive defenses like the Sicilian Defense and the King's Indian Defense as black.

"even the queen gambit" ++ No. Tal opened 1 e4. In later years he opened 1 c4 sometimes.

You should read Alexei Suetin's 'Modern Chess Opening Strategy' or 'Plan Like a Grandmaster'. He explains everything there. The problem isn't really that an opening like the King's Gambit is unsound (it isn't, it's about equal if you play the Bishop's Gambit). The problem is that it's not rich enough in possibilities and subtleties: after a brief explosion of fireworks it tends to fizzle out into a drawish endgame. That's why most strong players play Ruy Lopez (or the Giuoco Piano these days) or 1.d4/1.c4/1.Nf3. The build-up is slower, but it also means that you can keep the pot boiling for much, much longer.

BonTheCat wrote: CHAMP_TOTO7 wrote: I'm a fun of Mikhail Tal (like everyone else) and always wondered why didn't he play crazy openings like the kings gambit, instead he played more solid Opening like the ruy lopez or even the queen gambit sometimes.

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You should read Alexei Suetin's 'Modern Chess Opening Strategy' or 'Plan Like a Grandmaster'. He explains everything there. The problem isn't really that an opening like the King's Gambit is unsound (it isn't, it's about equal if you play the Bishop's Gambit). The problem is that it's not rich enough in possibilities and subtleties: after a brief explosion of fireworks it tends to fizzle out into a drawish endgame. That's why most strong players play Ruy Lopez (or the Giuoco Piano these days) or 1.d4/1.c4/1.Nf3. The build-up is slower, but it also means that you can keep the pot boiling for much, much longer.

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I like this answer. We can also look at it this way. Tal did well in complicated positions. One can argue that playing directly and aggressively makes things less complicated, because it is clearer to the defender what needs to be done. By playing "indirectly" (for want of a better term) you make things complicated because it isn't so obvious what needs to be done, ergo your opponent has more chances to make mistakes. Take for example I think the fourth Kasparov - Karpov match, when Kasparov needed to win the final game to tie the match. Instead of playing aggressively, Kasparov played a slow positional game I think the Reti or English, where it wasn't so clear what Black needed to do. And Karpov cracked under the pressue.

"You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest, where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one."

........ Mikhail Tal

That quote explains everything you need to know about Tal! 😀

From the pen of the Maestro's pupil himself, and doing that is much easier if you play say, the Benoni rather than the Latvian Gambit as black.

What makes you think so?

The best attackers are also extremely good positional players, and that includes players like Tal (Botvinnik called him a positional genius) and Bronstein. This is also why such players as Nezhmetdinov, Tolush, Vitolins etc. never made into the very elite. They were insufficiently rounded as players.
Having said that, to reiterate my point above: most gambits arising from 1.e4 e5 (which is the probably the white-black opening move combination with the most gambits under its belt) are insufficiently complex from a strategic point of view. Sure, Spassky, Tartakower, Bronstein and others have played the King's Gambit on occasion, but typically only as a surprise weapon (Rudolf Spielmann was one of few grandmasters who played it fairly consistently). You get a brief initial flare-up of tactics, and then the position clarifies and you have a drawish endgame. Most strong players are perfectly capable of picking their way through those tactics, even more so if they know that the opponent will play it.
With a slower build-up of the tension, like what you see in the Ruy Lopez, the Sicilian, King's Indian, Benoni, Nimzo-Indian, Catalan, English, Réti etc. you make it far more difficult for your opponent to find a simple way through the complexities, and you can deviate much more easily yourself without it being detrimental to your position (in almost any given position you have a choice of up to 10–12 moves basically equal in value). That is not the case to anywhere near the same extent in the King's Gambit. While the lines are not completely forced, once you've picked 3.Nf3, 3.Nc3 or 3.Bc4, the choice of good moves is much more limited. It maybe down to as few as 2 or 3 most of the time.

Right. If memory serves, the very first game in the Handbook of Positional Chess is a win by Tal, and it's not the only one. Yes, the game (that win in a Tarrasch French against Uhlmann) does include the familiar Tal fireworks, but only because Tal understood how to build a position from which such fireworks would be possible. In other words, the two things are not opposed. Rather, tactics, like that Fischer fellow said, flow from superior positions.

Because he was Mikhail Tal!

Because "more solid openings" are just what the name implies--less likely to lead to defeat. Tal wanted to win tournaments, advance through Soviet and World Championship cycles, and earn prize money. Playing riskier openings against the caliber of opposition he regularly faced would have led to inferior overall results.