Yea big fields are rough. Instead of being 5% to final table, you might be .1%, and with the top heavy payouts, variance shoots through the roof.

The old backdoor quad 990:1. That's actually never happened to me. The important thing to realize when beats in MTTs like that happen is that even if it didn't there is no guarantee of winning: had my quads won vs a likelier boat or flush in 2007 I'm still probably only 60-70% to cash the tournament as it was for roughly 6x starting stack on day 1 with many players left.

Thanks for the motivation.