I just started playing back in August and have read several books and played in at least 2 tourneys a week. My ROI overall has been positive, but it's been because I play at lower stakes, $30 rebuy tourneys.

My question is mostly regarding the handling of bad beats. I've been getting my all-in hands getting called by inferior hands, only to get beaten over and over again. I understand that a 3 to 1 or even a 4 to 1 isn't a certainty, but how am I supposed to handle the bad beats on such a consecutive basis?

The last 3 have been AJs vs. QJo and they hit a straight on the flop KK vs. 89 to turn a straight and AKo vs. 57s for the straight flush on the river.

Please help with any advice possible. I want to keep playing, but it seems like the randomness of poker almost equals out any skill put forth and that just isn't worth the time IMO. Thanks in advance.

If you're playing online, post relevant hand histories (and use the converter when you do so). If this is live, go and look at hand histories that people have posted elsewhere, and then tell us what happened in the hands that trouble you, giving the same information.

Saying that you got it in with AJs v QJo and they outdrew you is nowhere near enough. We need to know positions at the table, all of the action in the hand, stack sizes (yours and the other players), and status of the tournament (i.e. how close you were to the paid places etc). If you can add reads on the relevant players that would be good.

For example, if you're on the button with a stack of 1.5BB, of course the BB (and almost certainly the BB) are going to get involved. Sometimes they'll win. In isolation you should remember that with QJo v AJs they'll win approximately 1 in every 4 times this situation comes up. With 89o v KK they'll win approximately 1 in every 5 times it happens. With 57s v AKo they'll win 2 out of every 5 times. That's actually pretty often. It's not as though you keep losing to one-outers.

It doesn't matter that they won by rivering a straight flush or whatever if your money was all-in preflop (which seems to be what you suggested). Those numbers above are what you can expect overall - sometimes they'll river a straight flush, sometimes the board will be 24J7Q, sometimes the flop will be 777. Either way you should expect to lose with AKo v 75s ~40% of the time. That doesn't necessarily make these bad beats if they were getting the right odds to call etc. At the moment though it sounds like you got your money in against inferior hands - that's what you want to happen! The caveat is that in various situations you don't necessarily want to be putting your tournament life on the line (winning smaller pots is ok too), which is one reason why stack sizes and tournament status are important here.

So in short, give us more details about the hands and we can tell you a bit more about whether you made the right decisions but got unlucky, or could think about doing things differently. If the money didn't go in pre-flop, then it's even more important you give us a ton more information.

Let's first get some more information and look at how you're playing. After that we can decide whether this is random bad luck. Either way, you have to accept some short term variance. Provided you are making the right decisions over a bigger sample everything will come good for you. Having said that, if you don't like the variance then you might want to consider cash games instead of MTTs. The payout structure of large field events means you will lose much more often than you win. Seems as though that's not the experience you want from poker, which is totally fine if so!

No, you don't understand that 3:1 or 4:1 isn't a certainty. If you did, you wouldn't have made this thread.

Leatherass years ago admitted that many of the "star" online players ran hot initially. They didn't start off as winning players. They were the lucky ones. The ones that survived were the ones that worked on their game to finally have their skill match up with their luck. There were far more players that probably were better at first but just ran bad and got out of the game.

All you can control is making the right decisions. You can't control the outcome. That said, any beginner is making lots of mistakes that they can fix to increase their chances of success. Your time is better focused there.

Your sample size is tiny. Even if you are avg'ing 3 tournaments a week for the past 7 months that is like 84 tournaments. Theoretically if only 10% of the players cash and you are an avg player then you would have only cashed about 8 times. If these were min-cashes then you would still be largely unprofitable.

Making money in tournaments is all about winning 1st (or at least finishing like top 3). It is super high variance. My uneducated guess is that you would want a sample size more like 2k+ tournaments to really get a good idea for your actual winrate. 84 tourneys is nothing.

Anyways, if you want a game where your skill edge shows results in a shorter period of time then you should try your hand at cash games. However, if you posted this regarding cash games what I would say is that these beats are normal variance and the reason you haven't had success is likely because you are simply not a very good poker player yet. You may think you are but 8 months is nothing and you haven't even put in very much volume in those 8 months.

It blows my mind that people come in to poker and expect immediate results. The vast majority of players want to win and think they have the ability to win and most are far more experienced than you.

You remember the bust out hand because it can only happen once. The fact is that if you keep getting it in against bigger stacks you need to be lucky.

Take the 3 hands you mention. If you get it in with these 3 hands in the same tourney, your chance of busting out is 1 - (0.72 * 0.81 * 0.6) = 0.65. You will bust the tourney 65% of the time.

I am 100% sure that you you are playing close to crap in many situations that you never even think about.

The other day I was in a tournament I was getting aces/kings/queens over and over again.

My last hand I got it all-in with KK against AK, Ax, Ax, and Ax.

On the turn the board read QJxT and I was drawing dead; I couldn't even chop the pot since all the aces were out.

Was I skillful? Was I unlucky? You can't really tell. I was very lucky to get so many big hands, and I was unlucky that when my hand didn't hold up I was against someone who had a bigger stack than me.

None of that has anything to do with skill. How about the unlucky person who is stuck getting hands like QJo and 89 all tournament long?

Long story short, focus on:
1. Making good decisions
2. Fixing your mistakes
3. Getting better at poker

I think it's hard for people to tell whether they're lucky/unlucky. If you're folding every hand where you're not 80% sure you're ahead that's not good poker.