Chess Is Unfair

I am USCF rated 1600, though I regularly beat 1700-1800's. I usually get a very nice position out of the opening; possibly even a winning middlegame position. And then, everything gets traded off and I draw. I've become very frusturated, because it seems no matter how good my position is, I'm not able to get that extra thrust of power to push it to a win. Observe one of my tournament games, played against a 2000 (!) player.

Some suggestions (without looking at your game):

1. Study lots of master games to see how they finish off their attacks.

2. Study books on attacking in the middle game (not just tactics).

3. Study books on positional play.

4. Study endgames.

These things should help you to become better at finishing off your opponents once you've got a good position. Actually, one more recommendation, which is porbably worth spending more money on than all the books covered in the last 4:

5. Get a master level coach, and have him look over some of your more frustrating games with you. Besides pointing out specific moves where you could have played better, he'll probably notice trends in why you're not spotting those moves, and can recommend specific books to study to help with your specific weaknesses.

Getting into endgames with people that are a lot better than you is usually a dicey proposition.  I am not sure why you were so eager to trade down when your advantage seemed greatest in the middle game.  Those connected passed pawns were HUGE and you let them go without much of a struggle.  Just my opinion.

Chess is an inherently "unfair" game. You can make 40 good moves, but one or two bad ones can throw the game away. Chess is also a game of trickery and resources. Many inferior positions have resources and opportunities and stronger players are very good at recognizing them and seizing the opportunity. Finally one of the most difficult things in chess is winning a "won" game. If you want to improve I would say embrace chess for what it is, practice converting better positions and defending inferior ones, master the art of trickery and grabbing any resource that the position offers, and always be alert and vigilent.

Im roughly the same skill level as you but I think you traded away the advantage at move 22. Rather than trading your very powerful knight for a pretty weak bishop I would have just pushed e6 instead. Having the knight there cramps his position and makes his rooks unable to make much space, but after trading he could mobilize his rooks and equalize

No clue if you missed a win someplace or if the piece sacrifice for the passed pawns was in fact only enough for equality. Play through the game with an engine, say Rybka 2.2 that comes with Arena, and check. Identify, if you did miss a win, how it would have come about and what you should be looking out for in similar positions next time. Identify also if the piece sacrifice was actually beneficial or which moves weakened your position. That way you won't have to deal with that vague feeling of "having been very much better the whole game", which I cannot with good conscience encourage since, honestly, I didn't think you were. That unsettles me, considering that, since you wrote "As you see", it must have been terribly obvious to a player of my level, which is roughly the equivalent of your own (1683 DWZ). So, either you are clearly better at grasping the merits of Benoni positions (which I won't deny is possible; perhaps my strengths simply lie elsewhere), or you were, in fact, not as much better as you thought you were.

I'm not sure where you come out that you were in a winning position all game either. Your piece-for-two-pawn sacrifice was definitely clever, but I'd have to label it speculative rather than winning. It definitely creates some interesting chances for both sides.

The more I look at it, the more it looks drawn all the way to me. Eventually, black is going to give back the piece and win those two passed pawns.  Then you are going to enter a rook+minor piece ending, where black has the superior pawn majority (more advanced and queenside). This is probably drawn, but if anything I'd say black has the winning chances.

Your first 5 moves were all pawn moves, which seems like a bad plan.

And I never did understand why you think chess is unfair.  Because you can't easily beat people better than you?