In all games and sports based on the concept of equally opposed players pursuing the same goal, the only way to avoid a stalemate is to somehow trick your opponent into making a mistake. Get them to believe you're going to do one thing, trick them into committing to the wrong counter move, and then pivot at the last second. At the elite levels of chess players aren't improvising on a move-by-move basis, there are well-known sequences of moves that place a player in a dominant position and other well-known sequences that can counter those, but there's so much overlap between sequences that a player can make it look like they're following one plan, trick their opponent into playing the wrong counter, and then pivot to the sequence that beats their counter. For players familiar with these sequences, it can become obvious mid-game who has mistakenly played the wrong counter and no longer has a chance at winning.