Of all the games I play I'm wondering if not PLO8 is the one where I think position is more important. Therefore it seems a bit counter intuitive to me that so many hands would be playable from EP.

I should also try and characterise the sort of game I am playing at. It sounds a lot like the games you would nutpeddle. People are obscenely loose. Average flop is seen by 5-7 players, sometimes more, and they do not like to let go of hands. They will but in their whole stack to defend their ante.

One player check/called me on the flop, turn and river all-in with a 9-high flush he flopped, on a paired board, with absolutely no low, in an unraised pot. Basically the best he could hope for is to get his money back minus rake, ie: best case he loses slightly less than if he would just fold.

That's an extreme example but a lot of people will chase non-nut lows, bare lows or highs without lows when a low is already out. Basically, they will make all the mistakes. Only a few of them are very aggressive though, most fall into the loose/passive category.

This is why I see limited value in playing certain hands, that need "bluff value" to be profitable. I basically find that nutpeddling is a must most of the time and to get into a pot with a hand that is likely to flop a "decent" two-way hand instead of a nut one-way hand is trouble. Of course, one-way hands aren't very profitable either most of the time since I will always be up against someone with a janky two-way hand (like 3:d nut low and top+bottom pair) who will take half of it.

The post flop strategy seems to depend on either getting nut/nut, which doesn't happen that often obviously, or tailoring the bets to suck in multiple players so you don't win half of a heads-up pot.