The Luck Swing

I was in my weekly tournament today and throughtout most of the tournament, I was getting great luck. I was hititng nearly every flush, set and straight. I was the chip leader with two players left to go. I started stealing some blinds. It was very likely I was going to win the tournment. One player goes all in which was a quarter of my stack. I had . I called. He had . He caught an 8 and won. A few hands later, the other player goes all in. I have and it was another quarter of my stack. I called. He had . He caught a 10 and won. A few hands later and probably the short stack at this point, I went all in with . One player calls me with . A queen comes up on the board and I take 3rd place. It's amazing how luck can change and swing from one extreme to another. I had good hands to call the all in being the big stack, or maybe not since this is partly the reason i'm posting this. So either it's bad luck or bad decisions being the big stack. Or both. What's you take on this?

Good plays on your part (in my estimation at least).
It just sucks they caught their cards. It's been the same for me for awhile now. I need another lucky streak because I'm convinced it's luck not my play that's keeping me down.(right now at least)

I agree, good plays on your part, but when the bad luck comes watch out, i been like that for a while now, no matter what i got someone will catch something and beat me, its a part of poker, a part nobody likes, but it will change, when i get like that i stop playing for real money for a while and just play for fun just to play, and i will notice when im playing those fun games how my luck is going and when i think the downside is over, then i go back to real money.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> buck

Here's an article by Phil Gordon on ESPN that looks at this from the opposite side:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/poker...hil&id=2325711

What is noteworthy is just how close the pre-flop percentages are between really good hands and hands you might think aren't so good. Your A4o is the only hand I might question (maybe). Phil says that's a desperate-short-stack all-in hand. I'd say it might not be a chip-leader all-in hand. Just my feeling.

Wow, never realised how terrible of a hand t-9 suited is. I'll have to put that in my pile of hands to only play from the small or big blind.

I just ran your hands through pokerstove and came up with these numbers

Hand 1: 57.1167 % 56.90% 00.22% { Ac4d }
Hand 2: 42.8833 % 42.67% 00.22% { Js8d }

Hand 1: 66.4531 % 66.13% 00.32% { KsJd }
Hand 2: 33.5469 % 33.23% 00.32% { Th7s }

Hand 1: 63.2753 % 63.03% 00.25% { AsJs }
Hand 2: 36.7247 % 36.48% 00.25% { QhTs }

You clearly had the best of it everytime, we can't ask for more than that. Getting our money in with the best hand is what were looking to do. That is just too bad the cards couldn't hold up.