Will tell the story of my most soul crushing moment. It's hard to put in perspective, and very hard to relate to, especially given that I cashed for 192k in a tournament in a very good year for me overall, but it was so soul crushing that I was sick for a week afterwards and have barely played live tournaments since then.

In December of 2007, same year as the PCA, the Bellagio has a tournament series they call the 5 diamond. It's a series of ~15-20 tournaments culminating with a $15k buyin WPT event. I played 6 or 7 events leading up, think I had 1 small cash but nothing else. We started the main with 30k in chips and I ended day 1 with 20k, not good. I had a favorable table draw day 2 and chipped up all day to end with over 100k, survived day 3 and 4, and at the start of day 5 won a huge pot with AA v KK against Daniel Negreanu with ~22 players left. Pretty quickly into day 5 I'm chipleader and most of the other top players get eliminated. I make the final table 10 2nd in chips and am coasting to a FT spot with 40-50bb and a bunch of short stacks present. First I lose JJ to the Ax of Eugene Katchalov (the eventual winner) for about 1/4 my stack. Then I lose AJo vs KK to the late Devilfish (RIP) in a hand I probably made a mistake in. He raised UTG which he had done a few times (but at the same time he had been tight overall) with 12-15bb and I shoved from the BB when I probably should have just peeled and seen a flop. Then I lost 88 vs the AQ of Raymond Davis and all of a sudden I went from 2/7 to 7/7 with 5bb remaining. The payouts were something along the lines of 2.5M, 1.2M, 600k, 400k, 300k, 190k, 170k, and the previous payouts were also rather flat (I don't think there was much of an increase from 12 to 6). I didn't tilt shove in my chips but I was mentally devastated, folded some garbage hands and luckily someone else busted before it reached my big blind so I made the FT 6/6 with 4 big blinds left. First hand of the tv table I lose AJ v 88 to bust and went from likely having about 900k in stack equity to cashing for 192k over the course of 4 hands. No one bad luck hand did me in and I didn't punt off my chips, it was a combination of one iffy play and 3 unlucky losses.

It was the combination of everything that really got to me:
-that I finished exactly 6th, the last spot of the flatter payouts before they really got big. 4th place was over double my payout but 6th place was less than double 15th place
payouts listed here: http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/event.php?a=r&n=29206
-that i lost a 70/30 with 7 left to the eventual winner
-that the final 9 players were relatively weak compared to the final 26: Vivek Rajkumar, Gus Hansen, Mikael Thuritz (one of the best 8 game players in the world), Huck Seed, Peter Jetten (great NL player), Todd Brunson, Negreanu, John Monnette, Erick Lindgren all bust between 26th and 10th, and at the time I thought I was the best player remaining (Eugene Katchalov is a fantastic player, but I didn't know him at the time)
-that no one big hand did me in, but rather 4 hands all in preflop

I flew home and laid in bed for a week before feeling better. I despise bad beat stories and despise complaining about bad luck in a game of skill, particularly in a year where I won one of the bigger tournaments that ran, but I've never felt so soul crushed by anything. Poker is a tough game to deal with the mental swings, even for those who have been lucky and are doing well.