We have a foreign exchange student at my family's house, so he doesn't know English very well. He would see me and my family playing Dominion, we would ask him if he wanted to play, he said that "it was impossible for him to learn the game." One time he finally decided to play, we played the first game set (with other first-timers) and he got second place. Later we play with the Big Money set, he had already caught on to (kind of) the importance of trashing, so he kept his own against us with our chapels.
Then, on his third game, completely on his own, he went for a festival/council room engine (with a militia to make us discard all of our cards we got from the council rooms he played) and completely crushed us. He even bought three provinces on one turn. Has this ever happened before?
Also, as for how good at the game I am, while I'm not the best at the game, I'm still fairly good (my low isotropic level is from not playing that much, I like playing irl better). He shot up in skill fast.