This has been on my mind for a while now. I would like peoples opinions. I personally believe that poker is purely based on experiences and situations which you learn from. Yes people will learn from situations faster than others due to memory but apart from that...
Also determination and hard work obviously play a part in grinding all day and needed to keep motivated to keep learning but I also think that these are traits which are learnt from past life experiences and not naturally given. For example, Phil Ivey spent time on the streets in Vegas when he lost big which therefore gave him the determination and focus to become a better player. Manny Pacquaio, Zab Judah, James Kirkland etc.. (Boxers) lived rough when young and this gave them the determination to graft hard in the gym to earn as much money as possible... you get the idea. Obviously boxing needs natural ability but I am refering to the determination element only.
I think very much comes from experience, you cant just learn the rules and expect to crush even the lower levels for example NL100 online.
But there are other things that are important and hard to learn, especially in live games i see persons (very few) who barely now how to bet, but they have a great empathy, they can crawl into the thoughts of another player, talk with him and make the right decisions, most of them are loosing players but without this "talent" they would just get crushed.
You can obviously learn those skills but it is very hard, i played a good amount of live poker the last couple of month and i still struggle with some of these skills.
so, I think you can learn all those skills but it takes a lot of effort to be really good.