percentage of playable hands in Omaha/8

[DoubleDuke]

What would be a realistic percentage of playable starting hands in a loose passive low limit omaha/8 game?
By playing according to starting hand requirements given in most of the omaha/8 books, I seem to be playing only about 1 out of every 20 hands. Is this realistic for this game?
Its definetely boring as hell!

[Niediam]

Then you are reading the wrong books. I suggest you try Zee, Mike C, or SS2.

[kyleb]

It really depends on the player - if the game is weak and passive, you can get in there with many hands that you normally would not because of the value of making a decent low or random draw. You can play a lot of hands that are usually garbage but contain a pair, for example, if there are a bunch of calling stations that do not raise before the flop. A good example of these types of games are the $40PL and $80PL games on Prima - they are packed with loose/passive players who don't have a grasp on Omaha/8 whatsoever, much less Pot-Limit games.

That all said, 1/20 hands is quite ridiculous. Consider that at a full table (let's say 9), you have the best hand 1/9 times overall. You should probably be playing somewhere around 12-15% of your hands, adding more when you can if the table is loose/passive.

Also, definitely read Ray Zee's book on split poker. I bought it for Stud/8 and inadvertantly became a Omaha8 player because of the great advice!

[Ironman]

Double D,

There are a bunch of threads on this within the last couple months and we usually come up with numbers around 20%.

My numbers come in at 24%, and I feel comfortable with that amount.

gl,

Dave

[PokrLikeItsProse]

Cappelletti suggests that about 30% of hands are playable from early position and that more are playable from late position. (Buy the book to find out what they are.) I tend to play in very loose games where it is not unusual for an UTG raise to attract 4-5 callers (with UTG sometimes having the worst or nearly the worst hand out of all players in the hand), so it is not unusual to find myself in over 40% of hands, but then I am willing to play any hand that I think is even minutely positive in terms of EV against the range of hands I expect myself to be against and I have the stomach to handle increased variance.

I have yet to play for long in a game characterized as tight, so I have not yet discovered what would be an adequate percentage of hands to play there. The caveat is that Cappelletti's book is geared towards loose games.