Phil Helmuth's Starting Hands

“Tight is right and supertight is better than right.”
   -Phil Hellmuth in Play Poker Like the Pros.

Phil Hellmuth guarantees that if you limit yourself to playing only these ten starting hands, you can crush any average game. Hellmuth suggest you can play these hands from any position, and should almost always raise and rereaise with these hands.

Sounds simple enough. But if poker is really that easy, wouldn’t everyone make it to the final table of the World Series of Poker? Is Hellmuth’s simple system really that powerful?

Pros

• Easy to remember. If you are a novice, you would appreciate the simplicity of Hellmuth’s system. Instead of remembering the more complex hand groupings advocated by Sklanksy, Hellmuth’s system is devastatingly simple: Play all pairs from AA to 77, and play AK and AA. With less to remember, a novice can concentrate on observing other players instead of worrying about whether AJ suited can be played in late position.
• Very small swings. Since you will be playing with the very best hands, you will almost always have a great statistical advantage in most hands you play. You won’t win big with Hellmuth’s system, but you will build your stack slowly but surely.

Cons

• Boredom: The biggest drawback to Hellmuth’s system is that it is boring. The chance of getting dealt high pocket pairs is extremely low. If you stick to Hellmuth’s system, ninety percent of the time you will not be involved in a hand.
• Predictability: After an hour or two, your opponents will recognize that you only play the top ten hands. If you are playing against halfway decent players, they will start folding whenever you get a good hand. In the long run, this can get very frustrating.
• Suited cards: Hellmuth recommends that only intermediate players play Ax suited cards. I disagree with this assessment. Suited A2, A3, A4, A5, AT, AJ, AQ, and AQ are all very good starting hands. If you look at the expected value chart, which analyzes the rate of return of each starting hand, you can see that those suited hands generally yield a positive return.

  You don’t need to be an intermediate level player to profit from Ax suited cards. Ax suited cards are easy to play. If no one raised preflop, you should always limp in with Ax suited cards. If you don’t see at least two cards of the same suit on the flop, simply fold. If the flop give you a flush draw, you should pay to see the turn card if at least three other players are in the hand. With more people in the hand, the potential size of the pot justifies calling at least one bet to see one more card on the turn.

Conclusion

If you have never played Texas Hold’em before in your life, Hellmuth’s top ten starting hands is the system for you. However, while Hellmuth’s system is a good starting point for beginners, by no means can any player rely on this overly simplistic system. Poker is a game of deception and expectations. You must mix things up to win. As I’ve suggested earlier, try mixing in suited cards like A2, A3, A4, A5, AT, and AJ into your rotation of playable hands.