Personally, I believe that polygon modeling of a hand is the easiest method. It can give the basic hand shape fairly quickly. If you need a tutorial on this there is a good one at 3dcafe.com.
If you are looking to utilize patch modeling (I am assuming that you are using Surface tools, and not nurbs patches), that might be a more difficult. Remember that a patch can only have 3 or 4 sides. Max won't apply a patch otherwise, and will leave holes in your mesh once you apply the Surface modifier.
Hope this helps
Jer
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