Dr. Al, I have a question for you, and anyone else who wants to answer

[Alex/Mugaaz]

No. It's really just time and work. I'm sure a lot of these guys are smart too, but anyone who plays and studies 15hrs a day is going to make it to the 20/40 at least. Now if you're not very smart maybe you may get stuck here, and if you're only mildly intelligent you may never be able to play higher than 30/60. It probably takes some genius, work/study ethic, and luckboxing to win higher than that.

Everyone on this forum is in love with the concept of extremely gifted people, but the one thing all of the top people here DO have in common is how much they play poker, study poker, and run hot. If you're smart youre going to move up faster and have a greater chance of being able to beat the harder games, but as long as you don't suffer from a learning disorder you can do very well as long as you put in the hours. Anyone who thinks they're going to be crushing 50/100NL playing/studying 12hrs a week needs to be kicked in the face. Almost no amount of genius and only insane luck is going to get them there.

Intelligence is only the deciding factor when both people work as hard.