Ta-Chih "socutiesf" Geeng didn't come out of nowhere, he has been around on Pokerstars at least since september 2008. Prior to the end of July 2011 he was playing everything from $1/2 PLO to $50/100 PLO and $5/10 NLHE to $10/20. Geeng made a profit and there is no doubt that during the period, he went through some substantial swings, both strikes and gutters. But those swings were relatively small, by highstakes measurements that is.
Things really started to go in a different direction once socutiesf decided it was time to raise the stakes to PLO$100/200 and PLO$200/400. In the beginning of September he found himself down around $300K, a significant amount of money for all but the very richest, especially when it looks like it took him years grinding to make somewhere around $100K. Everyone who played a fair amount of hands of PLO knows that variance can be brutal at times, but very few has the mental strength to keep playing their best and turn things around like Geeng did. In the following 60 days he managed to win $1600K (1,6 million). Around $300K of this comeback came from playing NLHE.
socutiesf's two largest hands came both on 2011-09-08 playing PLO $200/400 against skjervoy , in both hands players were deep stacked, pot was 5-bet preflop and Torbergsen had aces.
Both of these pots got so big preflop that the flop play became somewhat automatic for both players. Being out of position in spots like this can actually be to your advantage, since there is no more decisions on later streets to be made, and a there is always a remote chance that your opponent that has position on you makes an incorrect fold. However in general, piling in tons of money holding good kings against a tight opponent that is gonna have aces everytime (not the case here) is obviously a loosing proposition.
socutiesf is in really bad shape preflop (32.8%) but flops well $239K pot
socutiesf holds a way better hand preflop (45,33%) when up against aces $202K pot