I think chess is a far richer game than espionage allowing a wider variety of styles. In chess the opening is often about the struggle to create a battlefield that accommodates you style, tactical, positional or strategic. In espionage if your goal is victory then allowing your opponent to take the Initiative and counter attacking is the safest course. This only leads to dull long drawn out games however. Such a style would be punished in chess by a player of a similar standard.

Dark Prince:

I agree with Justaminute in that Sabotage, even the Open variations, favors the defensive player. The pieces don't have the range they do in chess so they can't easily take advantage of the extra space (don't tell Mark, he already thinks space is over-rated :).

That said, like you I am willing to attack, blindly if necessary, to keep the game moving forward in an interesting manner. 

happy hermit:
That may be true. I guess I would have to compare my games against defensive players to those against aggressive players. I will concede that at BK defensive play is more effective than at IYT in the corresponding variations due to move tracking.
As far as space is concerned, an aggressive player tends to acquire space for manuevering while the defensive player may end up with very little space for the same. At least that has been my experience.
It could also be that a less skilled/experienced player may do better playing defensively than aggressively. For me though, I don't want to wait for my opponent to make a mistake but would rather attempt to manuever into a superior position from which to attack.

Dark Prince:

I agree defensive play is more effective here than at IYT.  It is easier to gain complete information which, in turn, makes material relatively more important (and initiative less important).

It's hard to judge how effective one style is compared to another.  Though I think a defensive style is technically better, I doubt it makes a huge difference and I think most players prefer an aggressive style.

I consider myself relatively aggressive, but of the 2000+ rated players I am familiar with only Mark and dAGGER are clearly more defensive than I am.  On the other hand, only pcron and Borg-one were clearly more aggressive.   The rest seem willing to gamble some of the time . . . a poker analogy is probably appropriate here.