[RiverDood]

Luck's always a part of poker, and shame on me if I didn't express the question more precisely. What I'm focusing on are the sessions where there was nothing grotesquely unlucky about a single hand (no 3-outers that some other guy hit on a river) . . . and no glaring (or moderate) mistakes in terms of hand selection, reads or post-flop play . . . but where nothing worked all afternoon, until the chips disappeared.

I'd find it refreshing if someone argued that such sessions never occur. In the end, there was always a better play available. Or an egregious bad beat that shouldn't have been a bad beat. Then we could say that any loss could be attributed to one of those two factors. We cheer ourselves up by saying that the loss, in some form, was a fluke.

In effect: "Give me the worst 15 seconds to play again, and if the odds or my judgment come out the way they were supposed to, I could be headed toward the final table as chip leader."

It's more jarring to think that even in a multi-hour tournament, where patience and selective aggression usually pay off, there occasionally could be a nonstop run of hands that just won't work.