In recommendations about starting hands, etc., people often refer to things like playing the top 20% or 30% ... of hands. There are a few ways I can interpret that. Do they generally mean...
1) Of all the 270K possible hands, the the 20%(~67.5K hands) with the greatest EV?
2) Of the profitable hands, the top 20%
3) The hands that account for 20% of the expected profit. This would be significantly fewer hands.
4) Something else that I haven't thought of, yet.

Thanks for the help--

its really never possible for a person to tell another person with any sort of certainty what a 3rd person was referring to. for certainty you need to ask that 3rd person. when it is not possible to ask the 3rd person, the specific reference in the specific context typically is useful to the interpretation.

However,

without giving you any assurance of certainty i will hazard to say 'they' are most often referring to a percentage of dealt hands.
so X% of 270725 hands.
and by "top" % its the hands that you deem 'best', or if some reference was given to an ordering system its the hands that system deems as best.



i have a follow up question for you.... how did you arrive at 67.5K as 20% of 270K??

It's the new math. Just another leak in my game. Looks like it's 25%, so I probably hit the 4 instead of 5 when doing the calc in chrome.

You're right about not know for certain what other meant. I suspected it was % of total possible hands, but thought that maybe there was another common usage.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

They are almost certainly referring to #1, the best 20% out of all hands you could be dealt.

Also ranges for o8 can vary quite a bit depending on whether it goes HU or 3-way+. Especially so for strong high-only hands, so it's really not the best metric. However, people can use the term pretty loosely and I'm sometimes guilty of it too.

I found a website with an extensive breakdown of all the possible starting hands in Omaha Hi/Lo ranked in order of greatest equity, including Scoop, High Hand, and Low Hand. The equity values are based off ten hands being dealt, and then determining the winners based on a complete board run out and the assumption that no hand is folded. You can find it here:

https://caniwin.com/poker/omahahilopre.php

I wouldn't mind a discussion on people's opinions on this list and whether or not they consider it an accurate representation of the most profitable hands they include in their own ranges.

The presentation is nice, the methodology for ranking the hands is unlikely to be the best, though it could still be a useful reference

Let me give an example

Ax4xay9z is ranked as 6.15
In pql the same hand is ranked as a top 2%

here, the difference is probably not that important, its clearly a superior starting hand and we are likely to play it similarly regardless of where we decide the correct valuation on this spectrum is

Pql uses a different methodology that effectively weighs 'good hands' more strongly than any 4 cards

Similarly
pql ranks axay7z6z as a top 2%
While the other list ranks it as a top 24%

That is a rather dramatic difference in valuation, aa76 is a much worse hand when every 4 cards go to showdown. In practice, folding aa76 pre-flop will normally be a mistake but it can be theoretically correct.

For example,
Up against a234 and a2jt when both villains are double-suited, aa76 will be in 3rd place with about 25.3% total equity.

Personally, I would not consider axay7z6z as a top 2% hand, but at worst i would consider it a 10-12%ish hand. it is the type of hand we must be able to evaluate to the circumstances.

So, without having done an exhaustive review of the list, early signs suggest it should be approached with caution in certain areas.

Yeah like in a tight game, I'd rather have a hand like QQ43, where its high and low components play well HU. In a loose game, I'd rather have like A542 or AKQT where the one way components are strong and we're fine with getting half (or even 1/4th) of 6 way pots.