Re: the wheel. Depends on the situation. If the flop came something like 2-4-X giving you an inside straight with an overcard (I'm assuming it didn't pair your Ace or 5), pot odds of around 9-10 to 1 would make staying in reasonable, and you had very high implied odds if you hit your straight. If you needed runner-runner to make the straight and had no pair on the flop, yeah, you sucked out on that one and delivered someone a bad beat.
Sounds like you had the inverse of the tournament I played in at San Diego Comic-Con; good hands and wins early on, but then the deck just went completely cold on me for 45 minutes. Finally went all-in with QT offsuit as I was about to be blinded off and that was actually the best hand I'd seen for 45 minutes. Ended up one card from a flush on the river which would've tripled me up, but alas it didn't happen. I finished around 25th out of 50ish, but thought my skill level was stronger than the placement indicated. I just didn't have anything I could play.
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Sounds like you had the inverse of the tournament I played in at San Diego Comic-Con; good hands and wins early on, but then the deck just went completely cold on me for 45 minutes. Finally went all-in with QT offsuit as I was about to be blinded off and that was actually the best hand I'd seen for 45 minutes. Ended up one card from a flush on the river which would've tripled me up, but alas it didn't happen. I finished around 25th out of 50ish, but thought my skill level was stronger than the placement indicated. I just didn't have anything I could play.