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If one preferred the tie break conditions and sought to actively play for draws, how confidently could one force draws?

Could you force draws consistently with someone 100 points stronger than you? 200?

You definitely can't force a draw against a higher rated player, but you can make one more likely by choosing quiet openings and simplifying in the middlegame. But it's often tricky to pull this off. If you make too many second-best moves in pursuit of simplification, you'll drift into a position that's both simple and bad. :)

You walk into the game with white aiming to win and black aiming to draw. If you played aiming for a draw as white, you could probably achieve it reliably against a player 200 or more ELO points ahead of you (or you could simply offer a draw at the earliest point that the rules permit - most of the time black will accept it). But if you can reliably achieve a draw as black, you're probably a better player (and certainly not a significantly worse player) than your opponent.

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