Hitting the wall

Over the past couple days my chart has hit the wall. The unrelenting climb from last weekend has slowed down, stopped, and even reversed course as seen in the chart below.

This is largely due to moving to .02/.05 stakes and a bad run at stack roulette. Ironically I am still EV+ for the nickel tables, barely via green line but better including rakeback.

Still the issue is that I need to adjust for .02/.05 to get my efficiency up. After a particularly brutal eye-opening session I am now getting a better understanding of how to play Omaha effectively. Basically, more emphasis needs to be placed on pre-flop hand selection. While it is important to play strong hands it is even more important to have all four cards working together regardless of their rank. In the same way that suited connectors or small pairs can upend a premium pair in Hold'em, any four cards in Omaha can be played against big hands like marked aces but the trick is to have them highly coordinated to increase the chances winning. I've been stacked before when I flop top set of aces only to have that come in second to a flopped wheel. The saying about any Omaha hand only being 51/49 against any other hand is, while an exaggeration, based on a kernel of truth. There is now more method to the madness of calling big raises pre-flop instead of folding since the the winning hand depends so highly on the community cards. In retrospect this concept is totally obvious and has been stated before but seeing it in action taking my chips has been the wake up call I needed to adjust my game. I already realized that naked aces are very vulnerable and benefit greatly from being suited and connected to the other two cards in the hand but I have even more appreciation for how all four cards need to coordinate to boost those critical extra percentage points.

Think I'm going to go back to .01/.02 for a little while to repair my roll and apply new concepts before working .02/.05 tables into the mix again.