I don't believe that anyone can achieve some level of proficiency on anything without studying. How to define study? Well, it does not necessarily need to be studying a course, or a book, or a series of videos.
I would come back in history and analyze the first players and the first theory produced by names like Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, David Sklansky, Ray Zee, Mike Caro, Mason Malmuth, Ed Miller, Dan Harrington and many others. How did they achieve poker success? They did a lot of manual work, trying to analyze combinatorics, mathematics and probabilities. They did a lot of trial and error, in a repeated process, over and over, improving the previous results. This is studying. Many of them were sharp and smart people before coming to poker. Great books of the past (specially in mixed games) are still worthy of our attention, because their work was superb.
The next generation was based on these works. No one can ever say that Phil Ivey has a natural talent. Nobody knows for sure how many time he dedicated in his young to get to his level. It does not matter if he acquired knowledge talking to people and playing. He surely analyzed thousands of hands, played millions of hands, talked to the best and learned from someone, at least to get to a point where he could do the work on his own. That's what the best players do. The story is old, "the student eventually surpasses his master."
I believe that even the best players, at some moment had to sit down and patiently study, even if they had to figure out many things by themselves. But everyone has to start at some point learning from someone (the only exception are the first theory producers, who had to work the starting point by themselves).
