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One of the things about Pokemon is that you can't prepare for everything, so you have to optimize your team for what you're most expected to run into. Higher level players can take advantage of that by identifying things that people don't commonly carry an answer for (although once they do, lower level players will start doing it too until people do start carrying counters). That's also why Showderp and things like the Pikachu/Eevee team can meme on people so easily. On top of that, a lot of people don't really know anything but the metagame, so they don't know how to respond to unusual threats. You can even see that in the TCG, where mediocre decks sometime place high just because most of the people playing meta decks only know how to play matchups against other meta decks.
