Uchi Mata, I took a lesson from a Purple Belt who seems to be one of the stronger players I know. Stronger than higher ranked people because he takes it more seriously.
I was asking him about guard passing and he told me that his method was to pass and control the ankle first, then the knee, then the hip. So from any guard you are put in you still have that same process, which is clearing the hook, passing a knee, and then passing the hip. I've been watching a lot of guard passing videos the last couple of days and that certainly seems to be the process.
After I took that lesson, I feel like I fumble fuck around a lot, but I still come out on top fairly often. I passed one of the most advanced guys I know by breaking off a hook, pinching my knees around his ankles, pushing his knees together and hopping forward to get my knees outside of his, then kicking his legs across with one knee while lifting my other leg and then kneeling down near his hip. I sort of made it up on the spot because I wasn't familiar with the guard situation I was in so I just held my base and worked it out.
I don't doubt that there are only so many possible positions for hands and feet and that it is possible to work out the most efficient path through any position for different sized opponents, but before you get to that point can't you still become effective by sticking to a game plan?
You should definitely have positions you aim for, which is basically what you're describing. I certainly have a position I prefer to achieve from which to work passes, but getting there is very different against different guards and often achieving the position in the first place is the hardest part. Remember, once you've gotten to the point where you have one of uke's legs between yours, he has no hooks, and you have superior grips, you're not passing spider or DLR or whatever anymore. Now you're just in a great position to pass a generic open guard and he has to defend how best he can. It should be easier past the point where you've achieved your desired position than it was to get there (otherwise, why did you think that position was so good in the first place?).
To paraphrase Einstein, you should make everything as simple as possible but not simpler. Just saying 'you need to put his leg between yours and smash his hips' is too general. There are many technical nuances for how you do that that differ based upon the guard uke is playing, and those nuances are what make the difference between being able to actually pass a skilled guard player and getting swept because you didn't deal properly with his guard prior to trying your favorite pass.
You can think of it in terms of gates if you like. The first gate to passing guard is dealing with any facet of the guard that prevents you as the passer from controlling distance, and then establishing the distance you want. That can be a spider hook, a DLR hook, a RDLR hook, a foot on your hip, a butterfly hook, whatever. If you allow the guarder to determine the distance at which you engage, you'll probably get swept.
The second gate is gripping/positioning. Once you've taken over controlling the distance, a good guard player will be fighting grips and positioning (e.g. trying for an underhook) to re-establish distance or go directly for the sweep. You need to establish grips that allow you to work a pass without serious risk of getting reversed.
The third gate is clearing the legs. This is what people typically think of as a guard pass. You can go over (knee slice), under (double unders), around (torreando), or through (smash passes), doesn't matter. But somehow you need to clear the guarder's legs so that they are no longer between you and his upper body.
The fourth and final gate is preventing recovery/securing the pass. You do this primarily by killing the guarder's hip mobility, whether that's directly (e.g. clamping on the hips at the finish of a leg drag) or indirectly by getting a heavy side control or north south. But as long as the guard player has hip mobility you really haven't finished the pass because a good player will use that space to recover.
The gates to a pass become less guard specific as you go forward because at each stage you as the passer are doing more to control the terms of engagement. But you have to do them in order, and just practicing the last two won't help you much if you can't perform the first two adequately. That's why you need to work on guard specific variations of your favorite passes rather than generic variations, because if you can't clear the spider hook or kill the butterfly hook it doesn't matter how good you are at clearing the legs or killing the hips. That's my (long winded) point.
