What would you do and why ?

I was a little bored and felt like giving some random context to explain an issue I had while playing chess.

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You're playing a tough opponent, both of your openings are book; the position is equal. Your opponent seems to constantly find all the tactics and prevent them from happening. It's middle game, you're about 15 moves in. The game feels like it could go anywhere. Most of the pieces are still on the board. Maybe 1-2 pawns have been traded off. You're in a tournament. There is a special rule. You have to play for a win if you want to continue. Let's say you're both around 2300 rating. So, it's not as simple as waiting for a mistake.

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How do you feel about the following statements ? 

A) Going for prophylactic moves to limit your opponent in hope of a zugzwang.

(your opponent will eventually do a mistake if all the moves left are a mistake)

B) Attempt to complicate the position while keeping pieces on the board at all cost.

(keep trying to find tactics with pins/danger levels/threats and hope for the best)

C) Play positional quiet moves that feel resourceful on long term. 

(regroup your pieces and prepare to push pawns)

D) Stockpile all your pieces to attack a specific position.

(Focus all your attention on trading everything off to win by 1 pawn hopefully)

E) Consider sacrificing material for piece activity even if winning is unclear.

(Preferably A or H pawn first and maybe a minor piece if it can break the king's pawn wall)

F) Focus on a very strong defensive game where the goal is to mess up your opponent's plan. 

(They might be more likely to make a mistake while trying to calculate a win against you)

G) Something else (?)

The goal of this topic is to establish what people tend to prefer to do in equal positions in order to stay in a game. I don't have a board or any example. This is mostly psychological, but some options might be better than others in general.

I've been struggling a lot about finding options that may create opportunities to win consistently against much stronger opponents. I've been feeling like I am not aware of how to priorize decisions when it comes to very equal positions. I've been curious if someone found the light at the end of the tunnel. If there's a checklist of some sort of what to look at and consider while playing each move.

A 2300 tournament player doesn't form plans like that At least not without looking at a position.

Players who have studied the game try to meet the needs of the position. If the position lets them have a good attack, then they'll invest moves towards that. If the position lets them play for a win by being defensive or maneuvering or etc, then they'll try to do that.

The only option you give that I want to comment on without referencing a position is that in general being defensive minded is bad... at least it's bad the way most low rated players think of defense. Other than having a king that's safe from checkmate, the most important thing in chess is piece activity. Piece activity is some combination of mobility (influencing many empty squares) and being in contact with important offense/defense points (often weak pawns or squares around a king).

A strong strategic and defensive player (let's say like Petrosian) will defend in a way that his pieces are still active. Only weak players will tie many of their pieces to the defense of something when those pieces have little mobility and no other function than defense.

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But that doesn't answer your question. Your main question is how to generate winning chances in an equal position. Mostly what I try to avoid is a symmetrical pawn structure. As long as there is a fundamental difference like structure, then the position will give me and my opponent a different set of strengths and weaknesses, and then I just need to lean on my strengths to play for a win.

Some positions remain equal for a long time, and you don't really get a chance to play for a win until the endgame. Most players who are studied and experienced don't mind waiting until move 60 to start beating you. As long as they win they don't care if they beat you on move 20 or 100. So patience and knowing some endgame strategy are very important for the scenario you're asking about IMO.

For an example of passive defense being bad, here's a clip I recently watched...

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I really wonder what people think when they hear him say this...

Do they instinctively feel the advice is maybe not so good? Do they feel like the moves might be a little bad, and Finegold is exaggerating his point?

Or maybe they feel like the advice is good, but too high level for them in some way?

The reality is this is very fundamental and important stuff. The d4 pawn is blocking 3 (!) of white's pieces. That's just terrible, and it doesn't take a GM to give this kind of advice. Lots of people would have said the same thing. I would have said the same thing

Typically players who are much better than us have pieces that are more active then ours... so it can feel a bit suffocating. It doesn't necessarily mean you don't know how to play for a win, sometimes it just means they're better than you.

But also, it's very likely that the positions you think are stale and equal are not stale and equal So probably the best advice is to not answer the question you asked, but to answer the question that was better to ask... and the answer is to read a strategy book so you're better able to identify where your strengths are so you can play for a win even when your opponent sees your tactics.

I don't believe in playing passive. Irina Krush said something along the lines of, "playing passive is just seeding your losses," and went on to say that it was an idiom that her coach taught her. I believe you should always try and complicate the game, so long as you are good at that kind of thing, in hope ultimately complicating to such a degree that your opponent looses track of the complexities. I don't believe that complicating is a result of necesserily keeping pieces on the board because the antithesis can also hold true, such as a willingness of performing a tactical gambit that forces your opponent to think strenuously about new lines that they would be forced to reconsider in light of it. And while the main question will be about how to gain a win in a seemingly equal position, there's no magic rule. To win in such cases requires a conglomeration of tactics to break through the position. If you can't then the game will inexorably fall into your opponents hands. If the game happens like this, it becomes more a matter of survival, hoping your opponemt in the meantime will make a critical blunder, but the onus is on you to spot it.

Also, one suggestion you made was to focus on destroying your opponents plan. I'd go further than this and say to develop your own plan that happens to thwart the progress of your opponent. That would be more solid in the long run, because making moves soley to hinder your opponents plan, just isn't enough. It's easy to block an attack, but it's fruitful to block an attack while compensating for your own in the process. 

First, thank you for answering. I think we can definitely agree that passive play and lack of plan are a common denominator for losing a game quickly. Piece activity seems very important for keeping tempo. Another important concept seems to be to understand what the game is demanding and how to react to it. I wanted to share a game here, but I noticed that most of my losses are blunders from being distracted. So, in my specific case, I probably simply need to spend some time evaluating how I'm spending my time. I feel like depending on what time control you're playing, chess becomes a completely different game. Bullet seems to test your knowledge prior playing the game and Rapids seems to give you all the time in the world to calculate more deeply. Blitz seems to be where I fall short because I either play too fast or too slow. I haven't thought of a reliable amount of time to spend thinking at a move. It feels like the problems might be more practical than theorical.

There might be some correlation between rating and issues players are facing while trying to understand the game in depth. 

Try not be fixated too much on blundering, there's an old saying which I think is relevant here. 

"What's the difference between a master and an apprentice?"

Answer: The master has lost more times than the apprentice has won.