Everyone comes on here and likes to talk about what a great poker player they are. There are some legitimately good poker players on here. But it seems nobody wants to admit that it is really difficult to be a consistent winner. You have to do everything you can to study the game. Watch videos, read books, and have a certain knack for picking up your own skills. Sure, there are the obvious concepts that everyone can agree on like hand selection, pot odds, position. But when you start learning all the nuances, it seems you find different opinions on how to handle different situations. I've certainly found different authors that have contradicted each other, and some that contradict my own experiences. And that's the point. You have to glean what you can from each learning source, but you have to find a way to make it your own, otherwise it will be predictable and not necessarily work.

I think most people avoid finding out if they are a winning player or not by not following BRM. It's easy to remember the great wins and forget the losses. You could be losing money all the time, but easily ignore it.

I guess I'm feeling discouraged. It's been almost 6 months since I decided I would get serious and start building my BR from nothing. My goal was to force myself into becoming a winning player before I could move up in stakes or cashout. During that time I've done what I could to improve my play, read books, watched videos, learned to apply new concepts. I do pretty good in the freerolls (my itm % isn't very high because I play too much at work). But when I take the freeroll money to the buy-ins, I struggle. I win a little bit here and there, but it seems it slowly drains away before it can build into anything worthwhile. I still haven't even managed to win enough to cashout. I know my game has improved tremendously, but the results aren't there yet. Maybe by the year mark I can make a cashout.