Neutral

A lot of it comes from sheer experience and familiarity with all the pokemon and their builds and thus being able to predict them to your advantage.

TO THE SMOGON FORUMS WITH YOU! Seriously though, look at the tier you want to play, make a team that is good against the tops ten Pokemon of that tier and battle a few times and go from there. Eventually you'll get the hang of it and know what you need to be able to counter and how to counter it. <

Thank you both for the advice, I strongly appreciate it . I ultimately got some assistance from Slant on the PO Reborn server and he has been helping me tremendously with the meta-game.