Game selection is the most important way to make money in poker, but the stronger a player you are, the more games you can select from. Isaac Haxton is a top pro player who only plays only tournaments that cost $10k+ to buyin to, and recently discussed how this works on a recent episode of the Thinking Poker podcast by Andrew Brokos. He actually recommends against tournaments for less experienced players aiming to make money since smaller buyin tournaments have large fields and thus large variance, but the "high roller" tournaments have smaller fields which make variance more reasonable.

The bigger point is that while playing against worse players is an important skill if you want to make money, poker is still a very complex game with a high skill ceiling similar to a game like chess. If you're good enough, even pro players are "worse players" and you can "select" those games. Though admittedly even the high roller tournaments require some "recreational" businessman players for enough pros to be willing to play it for it to run.

Solver study has become essential for the vast majority of top pros, which Haxton also discusses in the podcast, and I mentioned my project in the space in my other comment.