～ば～ほど with noun + omission

Question

I said that I wasn't confident with my Japanese to a Japanese person, and that person said to me:

上手な人ほど自信がないよね

I didn't understand the meaning because ほど can slightly change the meaning depending on the usage, so I used Google Translate and it returned:

The more skilled people are, the less confident they are.

Then, the first thing I did was to confirm that ～ば～ほど could be used with nouns. It seems it can be used with nouns but I didn't find many example sentences, it seems to be uncommon, but I also found that you can actually omit some parts of that ～ば～ほど structure¹², like, instead of saying:

勉強すれば勉強するほど上手になる

you can omit 勉強すれば and say

勉強するほど上手になる

So, does the sentence the Japanese person said to me means the same as below? Also, can I rewrite it as the second way below? Finally, I'm not sure but it seems that I can also use なら or ならば instead of であれば. Can I also rewrite it as the third and fourth way? For example, it seems that when あるほど is not being used, you directly connect ほど to the noun instead of using の like "人のほど".

上手な人であれば上手な人であるほど自信がないよね

上手な人であればあるほど自信がないよね

上手な人ならば上手な人ほど自信がないよね

上手な人なら上手な人ほど自信がないよね

Answer 1

The main part of your question is covered by my previous answer, so please read this first: ほど translation in this sentence

it seems that I can also use なら or ならば instead of であれば.

I don't think so...

• 上手な人であれば上手な人であるほど自信がないよね: Grammatically perfect, but sounds fairly wordy
• 上手な人であればあるほど自信がないよね: Perfect
• 上手な人ならば上手な人ほど自信がないよね: Understandable but highly questionable
• 上手な人なら上手な人ほど自信がないよね: Acceptable but unnatural

人のほど seems simply ungrammatical.