The chicken or the egg?

There are 1,326 possible starting hands in Texas Hold'em, 60 of which are premium ones. That means that players can expect to be dealt a premium hand roughly once every 22 hands. Of course, premium hands don't always come smoothly, but over time, they achieve this ratio. Looking at the hand data I've collected so far, I can see that it's difficult to make the money if you aren't dealt a single premium hand in the course of a tournament. Of the four tournaments where this has happened to me, I only made the money in one. There's more than one way to look at this, however. It could certainly be the case that the lack of premium hands played a large part in my missing the money. On the other hand, it could also be the case that missing the money played a large part in my not receiving premium hands, since missing the money means I played fewer hands than I would have otherwise, and the fewer hands that are played, the greater the chances of not receiving a single premium hand. This a variation on the old conundrum "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?". Be that as it may, whichever came first, it makes no difference to the bottom line :-)

style flavor    buy_in  entry entries paid place winnings hands

MTT   NLHE       44000   6000     428  117   178        0    17

delta: $-50,000
2025 balance: $-929,000
2025 blue distance: $929,000
balance: $15,368,303
MTT NLHE ITM pct: 41.41 (1300 of 3139)