OP is also being really misled by survivorship bias, ie. the bias that since he was able to accomplish this by what felt like "putting in the time to fix his mi

OP is also being really misled by survivorship bias, ie. the bias that since he was able to accomplish this by what felt like "putting in the time to fix his mistakes", so must others be. There is such a thing as natural talent in gaming and it accounts for a huge portion of success. It's talent specific to that game or genre of games, it's not "the ability to learn" or "the ability to effectively review one's mistakes" or some other broad skill I had this discussion with a former pro-gamer who didn't believe that someone with high intelligence (e.g. successful professor, lawyer, etc) could be skill-capped at an average level in his video game. This was a guy who found himself dead in the water after his gaming career died and ended up working in a call center