In my home game (no rake, social), the vast majority of the time I raise with AAxx I end up losing.

It's a really loose, bad game where people will play any four cards for big raises. Often times an all in, four bet had multiway will be won with two pair (and not even top two!).

Last night, I raised with decent AA hands (AA5Kss, AA35ss) and lost every time. Mainly because there are 2-5 callers every time.

The question is should I not be raising with these hands preflop as hands run so close together in Omaha8?

If I could go heads up, I know I'll be a big favorite the majority of the time. However, as I said, people don't fold, and three-four bets encourage action...our players get mesmerized by the size of the pot!

FWIW, game is 1/2, with 100 buyin. Half NLHE, Half PLO8.

Do they? AAxx vs 3 random hands is 37% (and even vs top20% hands AA has 30% equity 4-way), that's a huge advantage in my book. I think good poker is about pushing equity in all possible spots, also pre-flop. Of course, if say limp re-raising works better to isolate (or to push your equity advantage even harder), why not do that.

Also, you are not forced to jam every flop against 4 players just because you have aces. It's hard to comment on the actual hands as you didn't give hand histories.

One problem with running those numbers is that it assumes I'm all in, and see the river.

It doesn't include those hands where the flop is 89J, and I fold the flop but would have won with my running flush/full house or running low.

well that's kinda just omaha, right? you can start aa23ds every time and when the flops go 5-way, equities get chopped up hard.

at 1/2 with 50bb's i'd look to implement strategies that allow me to get a big raise in pre to hopefully either get it in pre or make a trivial all-in postflop.

It also doesn't include the hands when they are forced to fold on the flop and would somehow make a miracle split. If you can make correct laydowns on the flop but they can't, it's even more edge for you than raw equities show.

People buy in 5-10 times (we've had plenty of 1500 losers and winners ), so getting it all in preflop does not happen too often unless the pot is three bet in front of me with a couple callers, or I'm short stacked.

It seems to me that raising big preflop in this game (omaha8) just increases variance a lot ...AA seems to play only well against one player in my experience.

I have very few experience in PLO8 but I would open fold in early bad AA. If you have AA97 rainbow, it seems a trivial fold to me. I would try to limp reraise AA with any wheel card in early if there is aggressive players behind.
Increasing variance is not a bad thing if it increases your winnings

Problem can be twofold.

1) transparency: if you are only potting pre with AA hands it makes post flop play easier against you for competent players.
2) postflop: losing often w a premium hand implies bad post flop play over a big sample.

those are definitely potential things going on.

as mentioned earlier, it's hard to comment without actual HH's. it could be the hands being misplayed. or it could just be remembering all the great AA hands that were given "bad beats" while not taking into account all the overall winrate.

all that said, i do think AA is the easiest hand to misplay in plo8.

Here is how I play loose players in home games:

This is for NLO8 opposed to PLO8. For hands like AA2x, AA3x, AA5x, preferably with suits

If all players are limping preflop I'll also limp preflop, this disguises your hand but also reduces how much you've invested into the hand. If you flop strong and everyone limped preflop this now gives you a lot of potential to build for a bigger pot. If you flop garbage then you lose the minimum possible since you limped preflop.

Now this second scenario is my favorite:

Say that someone makes a good sized raise preflop or someone makes a raise that gets 3,4, 5or even 6 callers. In this scenario I'd make a HEFTY raise to where I could scare most of the players out. The goal here is to either take down the pot preflop or to get HU. You want to do this because AA2x has a significantly higher chance of winning HU vs playing against 5 or 6 players.