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It takes luck to win a tournament, but luck doesn't always come in the form of a suckout. Basically, you win when you are consistently on the good end of variance. I'm sure you know that when you make a raise, call, or fold, you are making a decision against a weighted range of possible hands your opponent could have. Obviously the goal is to make decisions that are +EV versus that range. That may mean that Villains are consistently turning over hands at the low end of the range you put them on, or that your weaker hands are prevailing when Villains turn over hands at the top of their range. Of course, getting dealt good startings hands in the first place, getting moved to a good table, sitting in good position, catching blinds at the right times, having opponents win or lose key hands in which you are not involved, etc. are all elements of luck as well.

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umm, what he said. I had a few suckouts in the last 2 Monday night 10Ks on Stars. However, of those, rarely was I behind before the flop. My biggest might have been my AQo vs Jh8h, board comes JQ8, I pushed 350k and was instacalled, villan shows J8, turn came A, and I then feel free to launch a string of "table coach" aka Helmuth type berating. I also had got the lucky end of my PPs v AA on about 4 occasions. I do believe I made most of my decisions based on +EV. That, and you also have to make the tough calls, i.e., OESD facing an all-in bet and you have the guy covered. Does the gambler in you make that call? Or do you lay it down even though at worst you have 8 outs maybe as many as 11 outs? If you make the call, is it really a suckout when you see you are facing TP and you have an over card to that?