Do GMs play sharper chess or more positional chess?

What do you think?

I would guess: both.

Kinda depends on the individual. 

But in the broadest terms, Super-GM's tend to be less aggresssive than lower rated players.

As Nakamura once said "I had to give up playing gambits as I improved, because at the level I am playing now, gambits just don't work!"

I assume the reasoning behind that is, players at the 2700 or 2800 level have defense down to a science.

(I'll write you back, once I reach that level.)

Probably positional chess, I like to stay away from knives when I play chess.

yes

Positional chess become increasingly important when a player's level go further beyond 2000+. Why ? Cos a player has to decide between dozens of positions and their benefits and drawbacks.  Tactics are bonus from positional advantage. 

It make a difference among 3200+ engines whereas most of them are excel in tactics. 

Afaik, stockfish has been tested with more than 25000 patches to increase 3200 to 3500 elo within 5 years, most of those patches are positional adjustment patches. 

not every GM can play crazy  at the highest levels. playing ultra concrete attacker style like kasparov is of course very difficult, but i think those that dive into complications like ivanchuk and jobava have an even harder style. its not easy reliable playing at 2700 level when a third of your games are down the rabbit hole and you yourself cant tell half the time what the position eval is.

Hence, why you see many GM's play positional, players like Giri being the logical extreme of this boring cautious style. make no mistake though, those positional gm's are also monsters at tactics, its just no their main strength.

I think Grandmaster play with the way how they like it. If they like sharp games, they will go to sharp position. And if the love positional position they will go for it. 

I really learn a lot watching the videos of GMs like Hammer and Shankland who can explain the tactical calculations along with the positional considerations of their games. There's a lot of everything going on. All those tactics aren't coming together by accident. 

As they say tricks are for kids. Even I know that I play some trap lines that work at the 1400 level, but a better player would just destroy them.

However the point is that I just play for fun and even if in a few games those tricks and traps don't work, then its fine.

At the top level though, they are not playing for fun, its their careers and no one mucks about. At the top level they could get some forced combinations that are brilliant and the opponent has no option of avoiding those traps (Check out Vishy vs Levon from 2013, which I consider is the game of the century). However such games are very very rare.

However more often than not, traps and tricks, especially in the opening have been worked out and traps if they don't work they leave you in a hole or atleast slightly worse. Slightly worse is fine at lower levels but at the top level slightly worse is a big disadvantage.

Thus, opponents just play the 'perfect' line.

depends on the position - spassky

if your last lines were true, magnus carlsen woudnt be world champion