Try not to let a sample size of one night/day dictate your perceptions. There are absolute fish bowls, live, still.

Every weekend at the Aria, Wynn and Venetian. Even the supposed "deepstacks" they run are chock full of "terrible" players. But you have to be willing to embrace the variance and think long-term to realize your expected value from these "fish". I like to think of a field of players in a live Vegas MTT you will find about 5% great players, 25% sold regulars, 50% tourist/occasional players, and 30% I don't have a clue how to categorize them except maybe degenerate "action junkies" who are playing for first or nothing.

Surviving the early and middle stages of most of these live tourneys is a bit like trying to walk across the street of an old west town back in the 1800's in the middle of a gunfight between a bunch of drunk gunfighters. One gunfighter has a small chance of hitting you, but when you have to dodge bullets from a big posse of them, you'll need to have a fair amount of luck on your side.

If luck is on your side you may be able to survive to when mostly only better players are left then you can use what you learn from sites like this about how to play late stage tournament poker.

And the sad reality is that "long-term" can be a very long time and is a bit of an illusion anyway. Play tourney's for fun, but if you want to build a bankroll stick to cash games at buyin levels that you can afford.

Nobody "deserves" to win big money in this game of chance anyway. If you do, congratulations and I wish you more good fortune. Just remember that being in the right place at the right time, and having the confidence to keep making correct decisions based on the incomplete information you have is all that you can really do.

A little secret that the pros know is that when they want to really make some money they spend as much or more time trying to find games with rich "whales". This site would probably never have been created if it wasn't for a lot of the money that came from whales like Guy Laliberte who dumped tonnes of cash back in the glory days of online poker.