It's an odd experience to deal with.
My history varies a little as I do not have a
gambling background and once I learned the game (play money) essentially I went all in on freerolls - I already held a level of skepticism (rightly or wrongly) so kept deposits to a minimum. That being said I have prospered and built bankrolls on a few sites so my view comes from a healthy place.
But what I find is I appear to hit a ceiling. I will build a bankroll - and just to be clear I have never taken a cent out of any to play buy ins, just slowly built- and then hit a complete brick wall of epic proportions (please don't anyone chip in with the 'understanding variance' reply- credit me with some intelligence).
So, my game which is regularly improving with study and experience, is suddenly useless, I cannot win an hand. No, matter I player aggressively or passively I run into better
hands every time in a pot. And, this does not go on for days or weeks, but it can last months. Then suddenly it's as if the site is completely re-jiggered and I have a decent run for a spell - always shorter than the bad one, but hey. The outcome, as I have noted before, is it dissuades me from either depositing or taking the game more seriously.
I love to watch some of the poker streamers and am constantly taken aback by their play. Some are intelligent and study seriously (I am not going to throw anyone under the bus here) but some of their play is ludicrous. A couple that I watch often play any vaguely strong hand against other players as though their opponents hold nothing or are
bluffing - they just barrel every street regardless of connecting or not. And, it just staggers the imagination how often this 'works'. I try this and I'm dead meat by the first few orbits.
So back to the variance issue in closing. I have been a CC member for 1 1/2 years and played a a few years longer than that (learning) in total. My ambitions or desires are quite simple if variance is what it is. For all these meandering down spells, just give me a nice sun run for a few weeks where I can look back, at least once, and say "remember that fortnight when I couldn't lose?".
To date, and now over a few years, not a sign of one.