February 25, 2010 4:02:12 PM EST
I quit my job in Sep 2006 to focus on mostly online cash games and did just fine (and I don't own a piece of stars or ftp unfortunately)
But my focus was mostly games like Omaha hi/lo and limit poker, not NL tournaments or cash games.
Saying "no one walks away with any money" is just absurd. Sounds like you need a break from poker. And if/when you return to the online venue, maybe try something new, a different game (I highly recommend low limit Omaha hi/lo full-ring games to help you build a bankroll, just read Super System 2 and you'll be good to go)
And of course, post hands and discuss strategy to help discover leaks in your own game, or to see if everyone feels you did all you could and just got unlucky.
Either way, in poker shit is going to happen live or online. Unless the deck is shuffled at least 7 times in a live setting it's not "random" either.
I've had a shit-ton of bad luck in tournaments in a live setting. I played a $600 Omaha hi/lo tournament at Foxwoods and in the middle levels had a rich dork (he was ranked #4 on the Cardplayer POY leaderboard at the time) limp 2359 from UTG. I had AA3T single suited and raised, another guy had A246 and reraised.
This dork with 2359 should realize his Aces are out and his hand is junk, this isn't level 1 of the tournament, but no, he calls and I cap it and the flop comes 29K with two of my suit. So even though he's flopped bottom two pair, I am still the equity favorite with the nut flush draw and the pair of Aces plus the backdoor straight and low potential.
Instead it brick-bricks and he busts myself and the other guy with bottom two pair, when he shouldn't have been in there anyway.
Fast forward a few years and I'm in another $600 NL tourney during the WPT (same as before, the O8 was WPT event) and I have KQ and raise UTG and get THREE callers.
Flop comes 89J with two spades and one heart and I check and it's checked around. Turn is the T of hearts and now there's two hearts on the board. I bet pot (3,000) and this dork who was playing ANY fucking suited hand shoves for another 4200 (i.e. he has ZERO fucking fold equity) with 67 s00ted (in hearts)
So this retard has the idiot end of the straight on an 89TJ board and the flush draw, once again I'm a favorite and once again they get there on me with the King of hearts completing his flush on the river.
If I win that pot I jump to over 21,000 chips when most people are still on a stack of 6K. Instead it drops me down quite a bit and the same guy picks up Aces when I finally have to make my stand (and he goes on to final table and win $14,000 for 7th place)
So don't tell me it's just online poker man, I run so fucking bad in live poker it's disgusting. I feel like Matusow sometimes.