To make sure that we are on the same page, when I say that poker is 75% skill, it means that skill is 25% above chance (50%). When you say poker is 5% skill, you are saying that there is a 5% advantage (above 50%). As a result, poker is 55% skill.
If poker is only 55% skill, it's hard for me to believe that the professional poker player would only win 55/100 tournaments when playing against a beginner.
I noticed two inefficiencies based on my small sample size. (1) Once a player folds, most of them stop paying attention to the game. They have very little interest on how the others are playing the hand. I found this to be odd. When we went on a break, I wanted to watch the end of the hand. The dealer was making fun of me for not leaving the table. He was like, "you folded, why are you still here?" Everyone else that folded was already half way to the bathroom. (2) many people seemed to lack very basic patience. Some players wanted to play almost every hand. Those were the players that seemed to get knocked out the earliest.
Heads-up tournaments are different from 9- or 10- person cash games. NL is different from limit. Hold'em is different from 7-card stud. One hand is different from a series of hands. Depending on how you want to define "poker" you will get a different answer of luck vs skill.
I define luck as the part of poker that is 50/50 and skill as the rest. Far brighter minds than mine have concluded that if you take the absolute best player in the world and set him/her against the absolute worst player in a heads-up, NL tournament, then the worst player could still win about 1/3 of the time. All he/she would have to do is go all-in every hand. So that difference (66.6% - 33.3% = 33.3%) is the amount of skill in that particular game. Thus, a heads-up, NL hold'em tournament could be classified as (rounding) 67% luck, 33% skill.
That's a tournament, so a series of hands. In a single hand, it's closer to 95% luck. It's only once that small edge is applied many times over that the skilled players rise to the top. Back to the blackjack example, BJ is approximately 52-48 in favor of the house, assuming no counting but otherwise optimal play. That's a 4% house edge. The house as a whole can go an entire month, dealing many tens of thousands of hands, and still be at a loss. It doesn't happen often, but it does. On a single hand, anything can happen--it's indistinguishable from luck. The longer one plays, the greater the chance of the house winning. Over years, the house has a very clear advantage (as proof--look at the palaces built in the desert due to the house edge). So is the house edge 4%, the advantage in a hand? Or is it 100%, the advantage over many years? I take the former. And that's the definition I apply to poker.
This is a very big topic. You are a beginner. You have some definite insights--yes players SHOULD be watching hands get played out, and those who do will likely be better than those who don't. That you do means you have some level of passion for the game. That's great. However, you can be better than 90% of players and still lose money. Because of the rake. Again, this is a very big topic.
I'm not here to rain on your parade. Yes, people can, have, and will continue to make money and sometimes very good money at poker. You have a long way to go before you can consider yourself to be a consistently profitable player. I'm saying that to help guide you. Poker is a game at which it's very, VERY easy to fool oneself. There are a lot of elements to consider, the math, reading the table, reading the situation, short-term vs long-term thinking, understanding how big a part the rake plays, and how luck and randomness can last a long time. Reading players, ie, peering into their soul, is probably the absolute smallest part of the game, as others have mentioned.
I wish you the best of luck. Just be prepared for some bumps along the way.
