Just to give an example I was playing in a $22 deep stack tournament. Sitting 3rd overall with a chip stack of $26000. There was 23 players left in the tourney, top 9 made cash. The table is fairly nitty although there is one player who has chipped up for several all in occasions. He was "lucky" on multiple occasions! I have AK suited and raise it to 4 BB. Everyone folds but one. The crazy Villain re-raises and I just simply call. Flop comes out and I hit top 2 pair AK. I check, villain shoves all in for about $23000. I thought at first that this was a bluff to try and get me to fold, then i put him on a set, then I thought he would have slow played it more. Then I thought he might of hit his ace, but I know I have him out kicked. I was right.
I call, he rolls over A4! Board is A K 8! Turn 4 RIVER A BLOODY 4! Villain becomes new chip leader, I'm the new short stack.
For some sick reason when the 4 came on the turn, I knew another 4 was going to come on the river! If that's not lucky, and luck doesn't exist in poker, I will quit now and head to slot machines, I might have better luck there!
Sorry about the bad beat. A couple of comments:
Let me reiterate: there is no such thing as luck. Just randomness. Luck is a "quality" that people think they have or don't have, and in that way it's absolute nonsense. Also, you didn't know that the river was going to be a 4. You are not psychic, and you did not have a one-time vision of dancing fours at the table. You were being irrational because you feared the 4, so that's what you were focusing on --- and randomness justified your irrationality in this case. You have forgotten the multitude of times that you feared the river two-outer and it didn't come, because those situations weren't noteworthy since you were a 95% favorite. Since they weren't noteworthy, your brain made no effort to store that information and it just drifted away ...
Randomness is real, and it certainly influences every poker hand. It is equally certain that, in the long run, randomness is essentially neutral to EVERY individual player. In the hand that you posted, randomness "favored" your opponent.
hands like this happen to us all. Some of us even manage to win despite suckouts like the one that you shared.
My central point is this: you are fixated on the "luck", not on how you played/are playing. If you consistently get your opponents all-in in situations like the one you specified, then you WILL WIN in the long term. The fact that you've been losing for four years, however, suggests that situation is the exception and not the rule. If you're not using poker tracking software to track hands, then your "recollection" of your "luck" is probably very inaccurate. That is not a shot at you --- it is true of everyone (see confirmation bias).
You should be reviewing your play and, if you do, you'll almost certainly find that you don't get your chips in ahead nearly as often as you think you do. And you'll get reminded of the times that YOU were the lucky one.
In summary, I'm advocating that you change your focus away from luck and to the quality of your play. If the quality of your play is high enough, you will win in the long run. End of story.
Good luck.
-HooDooKoo