[TheRempel]

At one point like three years ago I turned $0.87 cents on stars into $1500 in four days without any kind of MTT wins. I don't remember the exact sequence of events, but a friend had transferred me $30 or $40 to play $5+$0.50 SNG's. I went out OOTM in five or six in a row, played some $10 NL and got knocked down to $0.87. Since my friend had no money on stars and the only way I could deposit was Western Union, I sat down at a $0.02/$0.04 LHE table, flopped top pair like a bajillion hands in a row and left the table with $3. Sat back down at $10 NL, hit a straight flush + other assorted hands and moved to two tables of $25 PLO with $10 on each. Blah blah blah, end of the day I had $130. Played $25 PLO for one more day, won 12BI, moved up to $100 PLO, continued to run disgusting and finally won my biggest ever pot at that point which was like $500 at
$200 PLO with a $100 buy-in when my flopped straight improved to a running flush four ways.

Of course I had about $1200 in life beats a couple days later (oh for the day when I could cash money out of pokerstars to neteller and have cash in hand an hour later) and the remainder quickly disappeared when I refused to play microlimits.

Once you have any understanding of workrate, variance and bankroll management you realise that huge run-ups from tiny (relatively) amounts to 'high stakes' area statistical anomaly no matter how well you play.