I would like to start a discussion about the following matter:

Let's say, someone with the same capabilities (mathematical, memory, pattern recognition etc.) as the #1 online poker player starts off playing poker today. This person only knows the rules of the game and has never played any hand. Is it possible for this player to become a winning poker player without reading any articles or getting any coaching. And if so, after how many hands would you guess he will?

It's a very interesting subject I was thinking about.

1,020,125 hands

Yes it is possible

This is impossible to determing

And what if we say, for example, 250K hands?

In many deep-going articles people state that a big part of skill in poker is recognizing patterns. A specific situation that once or twice happened in the past and your brain subconsciously remembers.

In our dummy example, stating that this player has mastered all this capabilities (and in fact, to an expert-level), I doubt if this sample has to be so high. Since I'm really interested in your thoughts, could you guess? Is it 100K, is it a million? Some rough guess.

I only needed 30k hands.

But did you use any external information? Because that was the purpose of my post.

This. Not even sure how you would attempt to estimate the number of hands.

I think they definitely could, mostly by mimicking the other winning players and reasoning from there, which really isn't a whole lot different than using external resoures... just takes longer.

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I'm not sure that I can accept your premise. Almost every time that Phil Ivey is interviewed, he makes a point of saying how hard he works at poker. A friend once said of Andrew Robl that he "is fanatical about studying the math."

My point is that the #1 player, live or online, didn't get there only because he's smart and can mimic other players. Of course he learns from his opponents, but he also does all of the other things you mentioned, what you call the external factors. In fact, players often look outside of poker to gain an edge.

Johnathan Little wants to bring a lot of energy to the table so he works hard to keep in shape. When the New York Marathon was canceled, he went out and ran 28 miles (yes, more than a marathon) anyway.

A lot of other players do similar things. Some of the pros talk over hands with other players on Skype. Some work with nutritionists or with coaches who will help them with tilt issues. To put it simply, today's pros want to be firing on all cylinders when they sit at the table. Nothing is left to chance.