[Small Fry]

I think you're confusing conservative with tight.

Let's take a player like Daniel Negraneu for example. He's going to be playing a lot of hands. But, he isn't going to be risking large amounts of his stack on any one hand unless he thinks he has a significant edge in the hand. He'll play small pots picking and choosing his spots. Only when he feels strongly that he has you dominated will he risk a lot of chips.

He'll pick up a lot of chips in the small pots. But he plays conservatively in the respect of putting a lot of chips at risk on very little +EV. He knows he can wait as a better chance will come along.

More time means more opportunity for that better chance to arise. It also means that all those small pot situations, where he manages to take a few hundred or thousand here and there, are going to happen a lot more. It gives the worse player more opportunities to make mistakes.

So while the poor player should be willing to take any coin flip he can, the better player can wait, he can bypass the 55/45 chance because he knows he can get you to put it all in when he's 65/35. He can't do this forever though.