Problem: I Can't learn poker

This is not a whine thread, whining doesn't solve anything.

I'm going to do more homework on poker this week than I have all year.

But in all honesty, I just can't grasp the concept of this game. I'll read a few pages from a book every now and then and while I can grasp individual facts and concepts, it would appear I have an extremely low reading retention rate at least for the topic of poker.

Some advice I get is outright contradictory to other pieces of advice I get. One guy was sweating me, I flopped trips on a two tone board, so I bet, the guy told me "Don't do that, you should always check your trips". Ok so I started checking my trips and then betting turn and river. My friend and one of his friends then sweat me, they watch me play trips and I check the flop and they're like "Why are you checking there? You should always bet trips on the flop" HUh?

One hand the other day I was letting someone sweat me because I assumed he was better than me, he got me into a 360bb pot with 3rd set against a deep stack and told me to call a 92bb river bet making for a 360bb pot on showdown with 3rd set on a four to a straight board with 2 overs that hit his perceived range hard and ANy Q beat me and the two superior sets beat me, particularly when there were huge bets on the flop and turn as well. Of course the guy showed up with the stone cold nuts not that that should be surprising to anyone.

As soon as I moved up to 50nl I got hammered back down to 25nl, I've lost 9 buy ins at 50nl in only 2873 hands and am averaging -31bb/100. Today alone I lost 4.5 buy ins at 50nl which is probably going to take a weeks worth of grinding at 25nl to get back if not two weeks worth of 8 hour days given my win rate which is like 6bb/100 at 25nl.

I gather people who attempt to coach me get extremely frustrated with me because I just don't understand the game. I don't mind playing it, I'm actually capable of crushing 25nl. Except for the worst of the worst players, it appears that most people have a much easier time learning this game than I do.

My friend says of all the people he's tried to teach poker too I am the worst poker player by far.

For example I had AQo UTG. Two Poker documents advocate raising from this position 4bb as opposed to my usual 3x, so I did that. The flaw I ran into was I was only doing this with premium hands. BTN calls my unusal raise size. Flop comes AK3 rainbow. I bet, he calls, turns a brick, I bet huge on turn, nearly pot, he calls. river is another complete and total brick, I'm beating virtually all the aces but for a scant few two pairs and of course the AK. I shove what was left of what was once a 100bb stack, and he calls and flips AK. And my friend was so mad at me that he said the guy had picked up that my 4x raise had tipped him off to my given hand strength and essentially trapped me.

I got a friend who is a very good poker player, I would definitely say he's a full time professional to be exact. He's very upset that I'm still bad at the game and I play hands horrendously despite having played Online Poker for 4 years. I have all the software programs, he's given me tons of reading materials, right now he wants me to play around with Flopzilla for a week to get an idea of equity and when villains can continue in a hand and when they can not.

I was trying to appease him, I had the "No Bullshit 6-max" poker document pulled up while I only played a mere 2 tables, which is a very short book by BestPokerCoaching.com and was trying to the best of my ability to play according to that document (although there were concepts I missed and misread boards, and adjustments I failed to make today which lead to further losses) and I feel it was so different from how I usually played plus there were a few sentences here and there that I missed that it lead me to playing a losing poker game as opposed to a winning poker game. It was making him frustrated that the document that was suppose to help me get a good start in my shot at 50nl was actually butchering the game because I failed to comprehend key concepts and advice in the document, at one point he said if I was there he would slap me if I pulled up the document one more time or referenced it as the sole reason why I made the play I did.

Not really sure what to do, friend says he's going to quiz me on Flopzilla and NoBullshit 6-max in a week and if I fail his tests he'll tell me best of luck but he no longer wants to remain friends with me.

I'm putting this in the beginner sections despite having played for 4 years because I think if you talked to him he'd tell you I still play like a beginner.