At a 6-max PLO6 (six-card Pot-Limit Omaha) table, when it folds to the Button, the reference opening range is about the top 45% of hands. That number does not tell you which side of the line your six cards are on. Ranked against all 962,988 PLO6 hand classes, the hand exactly on the line is (KQ64)T7, rank #433,346.
Key numbers
- Button opening range, 6-max PLO6, everyone folded before: top 45%, a calibrated reference frequency.
- Top 45% of 962,988 hand classes = the best 433,346.
- The hand exactly on the line: (KQ64)T7 (K♠ Q♠ 6♠ 4♠ 10♥ 7♦), Top 45.00%.
- Well inside: (AK)(AK)(QJ) Top 0.11%, (AJ)(KQ)(T9) Top 0.49%. Far outside: (94)(73)52 Top 89%, (83)(72)94 Top 92%.
The spot
Six-handed PLO6. The players in front of the Button — UTG, MP and the Cutoff — have all folded; the small and big blinds are still to act. For this spot we use a calibrated reference frequency: the Button opens the top 45% of hands. So the question is simple to ask and hard to answer at the table: is this hand in the 45%?
Top 45% of what?
A percentage is only an instruction if you can see the whole deck it refers to. So we lined up every PLO6 hand there is, strongest to weakest, on one bar. “The top 45%” is only meaningful if you know the other 55%.
Our PLO6 ranking covers every one of the 962,988 hand classes, so the top 45% really means the best 433,346 of them. Where a hand sits on that bar is its percentile.
Where the example hands fall
| Cards | Class | PLO6 ranking | Top 45% line |
|---|---|---|---|
| A♠ A♥ K♠ K♥ Q♦ J♦ | (AK)(AK)(QJ) | Top 0.11% | Inside the top 45% |
| A♥ K♠ Q♠ J♥ 10♦ 9♦ | (AJ)(KQ)(T9) | Top 0.49% | Inside the top 45% |
| K♠ Q♠ 6♠ 4♠ 10♥ 7♦ | (KQ64)T7 | Top 45.00% | Exactly on the line |
| 9♣ 7♦ 5♥ 2♠ 3♦ 4♣ | (94)(73)52 | Top 89% | Outside |
| 7♠ 2♠ 8♥ 3♥ 9♦ 4♣ | (83)(72)94 | Top 92% | Outside |
The first two sit so far to the left that the needle barely leaves the edge — no hand chart needed. The last two are deep in the bottom half, and it isn’t close.
The hand on the line
(KQ64)T7 — for example K♠ Q♠ 6♠ 4♠ 10♥ 7♦ — is rank #433,346 of 962,988: Top 45.00%. This is literally the door. One rank better and the hand is inside the range; one rank worse and it is outside.
Its neighbours are near-ties, so the line is a line — not a cliff. That is exactly why borderline hands feel so close: they are.
What it means at the table
“Open the top 45%” is useless advice until something can tell you where your hand falls. The rule was never the hard part of PLO6 — ranking all 962,988 hand classes to apply it to was.
How these numbers were produced
- The 45% line: a calibrated reference frequency for the Button’s first raise in 6-max PLO6. It is a reference point, not a rule for every table.
- Ranking: PLO6 playability ranking, 6-max, computed by our engine over all 962,988 hand classes — see how we built it. The line is drawn on this ranking: the top 45% of its classes.
- Simulated: the order of the ranking. The top 30% was refined with more simulations than the rest, so hands below it are shown without decimals (Top 89%). The door’s percentile is exact arithmetic on its rank; which hand sits at that exact rank is an estimate, and the hands around it are near-ties.
- Classes, not hands: a percentile counts hand classes, and every class counts once, however many concrete hands it stands for. The top 45% here is a share of classes.
- Cards shown: each hand is drawn as one concrete example of its class; the class is what the ranking ranks.