It's tough soldiering on through variance. I used to play for a living as well. The larger the tournament, the harder it is, honestly. The period between hitting the money will be higher.
I was once busted out of a very large MTT on a situation so ludicrous you'll probably think I'm lying. I got all in with KK on a K83 flop against 22, and it turned and rivered 22. This was no WSOP, but we are talking $250 buy in, $250k guaranteed minimum. It was online, so I have always suspected the possibility of a not-totally-fair dealing algorithm. But, it's gotta happen to someone.
You're right to say that you are probably +EV to enter. The list of losses in past years you noted are, statistically, a tremendous run of bad luck. As you know, to win any MTT like this, you need to get lucky...over and over. Like 1-outing a BD flush in a split hand. Once per day of the event.
I hope you do make it next year and I hope some year I'll be able to justify the likely loss of $10k to join you.
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.