So I had $2000 to burn and wanted to learn to play hold'em. I've read and taken notes on HOH 1-3 and SSH, and also played around with writing my own THE simulators based on ideas in these books. I've played in 4 live $30 tournaments and 3 live $60 tournaments at local casinos here in Iowa as well as 7 $100 1/2 NL and 12 $3/6 LHE cash games ($100 buy-ins each time). Most of the cash games are loose with 4-9 players pre-flop (even when raised) and 4+ seeing the turn consistently. In the tournaments I've consistently placed in the top 20% of about 110 starting players, but never ITM.

Initially I made some bad plays and lost about $500 in cash games, took a break, and re-read the books. I went back and played some more cash games and lost $400 mostly to large pot bad beats (flopped Q set, lost to A set on the river; pocket K vs pocket A; flopped Q set, lost to gut-shot wheel draw; etc). Otherwise, I was winning hands and doing ok. I eventually got on a great card streak and won back around $500 over a few weeks and I was feeling good. Still down a bit money a bit, but confident in my play.

The last 4 sessions (each around 4-5 hours) I can't get good starting cards to save my life. According to my session logs I've been entering about 1-2 pots/hour with playable starting hands besides playing my blinds and an occasional cheap limp (~2-3/hour) with something like Q-Jo or medium SC's and folding when they don't hit. Even when I do raise pre-flop with hands like J-J or higher, A-K, A-Js, K-Qs somebody always shows down something better. During this time some of my blind hands have paid off so I'm only losing $20-50/session, but it's very frustrating. I still have around $300 to burn before I give up and only play an occasional $30 tournament for fun.

Anyway, my main question is how should I deal with an extended run of unplayable cards over many sessions,and is something that I should expect to deal with again over time? I understand that it's all cards, but how common is this?

I would appreciate any input....