Why don't zugzwang and waiting moves appear more often in the midgame than they actually do?
I'm not sure, that's interesting!
What goes on in a chess player's mind when he/ she makes moves?
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Because we are humans, and look mostly at forcing moves
What you say (every move improves the position) is true for the opening. With every move you develop a piece, secure a central square, bring your king into safety etc. And this could go on and on but at a certain point the forces will meet and then the fight starts and improvement means diminishing the improvement of the other side. The more agressive the players play, the earlier the forces will meet (in a game with hippo defence and reversed hippo attack this won't be the case for very long, in games with early double pawn moves in the center that's very soon the case). Then improvement is relative, while you improve you also make the position of your opp. worse (e.g. blunting his bishop, creating weakness, making threats of material loss etc.) and his improvement can then simply be to refute your threat etc.
In short: from a certain point in the game it won't be possible for both sides to improve, every improvement of one side will mean that the other side will become worse and vice versa.
Ok... The actual question that I want to ask is more specific than this, but it couldn't possibly fit in the title.
Now, to briefly introduce the question... I think it is safe to say that aside from cases of zugzwang and waiting moves, the fundamental reason why a player chooses to play a specific move is that his position after making that move is slightly better than his position before making that move. And if that is true, then theoretically in a game with no mistakes, the positions of both sides should be steadily improving as the game goes on. However, obviously this isn't the case, even in master games. And if you think about it, it doesn't make sense to say that assuming accurate play, your position at move 20 will always be better than your position at move 10, and at move 30 it will be better than it was at move 20. So theoretically, in a fairly large percentage of games it should be the case that somewhere in the middlegame one side has reached the best possible position that he can obtain, and any move that he can make worsens his position. This is the type of position where zugzwang and waiting moves arise; however, in actual games they are virtually never an issue in the midgame, and only appear in the endgame. So I'm sort of confused as to why this is the case. I guess if I had to phrase my question into a single sentence, it would be: Why don't zugzwang and waiting moves appear more often in the midgame than they actually do?