First; I'm near appalled. A lot of the things here are showing me that there's an abundance of an over-hyped quality about the people who are considered good. A lot of the "intelligent" comments are actually hard to read; not even taking on a casual or slang grammatical structure, and are really abusing some words that look appropriate to say the same things they're condemning. They don't mean what they appear to. I could say more but I've already taken a decently strong step forward. In summary of that; I'm disappointed as a whole.
Second; I just want to note that sometimes people vote before they make a statement or do not wish to engage in more than having themselves be heard and not attacked. Many people would not wish to respond after seeing some of the comments in here; knowing that a single statement meant to be more towards factuality was turned on by way too many people, and in harsh nature. Regardless; bullying isn't a way to get what you want, group mentality or solo. The people who did not comment still have a valid vote. My vote didn't become validated by me typing this.

So; I'm going to state something that will probably be called wrong and whatever other thing you can think of.

I was at my battling peak at generation four. There was no such thing as "Wifi" battling then. I went into every single match without knowledge of my opponent. What I did, was prepare on an internal level. I studied the metagame, I made sure to know exactly what my team could handle. I could tell what EV spread you were running by how much damage you did on average - that's saying something. Man I miss that.

Those days might be past; but I know something. When I battled, I used the information I gained, not the information that was hidden. I knew that I had seen certain moves, I knew I had see certain Pokémon, a certain style, a certain literally anything could tip me off to what my opponent was hiding. I practiced that, and it became the most prominent factor in the game, for myself. I could, and did predict what was to come in almost any situation; to the point where I was able to act as if I had a mental Wifi Clause going. I knew what Pokémon were coming. I knew what strategies, what pivots were happening. I could analyze the game.
As it stands; that was a skill. That's why I was able to beat the people who were intimidating to others without being scared of them. I was making choices in preparations for things such as critical hits; because I was able to inherently know the metagame inside and out. Often times, I had people asking me how I had known some factor was going to happen or calling me lucky. Well, you can't predict a crit, but you can prepare for it. If you know what your opponent will have for an answer, you will be able to figure out how to prepare. It's how I managed to take luck out of the game for myself.

Was I perfect? Hell no. I was good enough to consider it very reliable, and enough to cause games to turn in my favor from areas where it was not; like teambuilding.

So that's something I hope people actually look at as valid. If you really are an intelligent battler, and are willing to put in effort, you can learn how to do this.

It directly ties in here. On the subject of "Knowing your opponents team - does that add or detract skill?" I know that a lot of people do think it adds skill to know information because you can make better decisions. To me; it's detracting that skill of gathering the correct information and acting upon it. If you're given free information; that eliminates risk. Not luck; but risk. Risk is the factor that people have to wager - are you capable of making a certain play for a certain payoff, and are you willing to take it. Risk for me happened a lot when Charizard Megas became a staple around Reborn; I had a team that I was running, was most certainly OU, and was not really capable against either Mega. I had to figure out where I could go, what risk I could take and how to deal with it. With a knowledge of my entire team; my opponent already knows how to deal with everything and does know if the Charizard is worth putting out, or if the Aegislash is a better choice to defeat something I would have. Without it, they have to figure that out. Often, that'll cause a Risk balance to be decided upon. It's not luck; there's no number generator messing with anything. It's a choice, predetermined by choices in teambuilder and previous moves in the game. At this stage, it's hardly guessing; because you know if you can just use safe moves to win no matter what. Most of the ti