hellmuth's 15 starting hands

hellmuth states that you should only play any pocket pair ak, aq. he also says you can play a suited and suited connectors... is this strategy too tight?
u can go all in with aa kk qq ak, and depending on the player play 99 10 and jj super aggressivlely.

This sounds like a pretty good strategy. what are your thoughts on it?

Thanks

super tight strategy for weak/tight players. Basically designed to minimize losses. Not a good strategy for people that aren't Phil Hellmuth where everyone is trying to bust him with ATC.

This assumes a full ring I suppose, but even then this makes you way too easy to read. See some starting hand charts in HoH where position is actually taken into account. Anyone with half a brain can do better than this strategy.

I think it's a pretty solid strategy.

Good for beginners playing at lower limits.

I have used a similar strategy and it did seem to work for me.

I am having trouble trying to mix up my play now as I am used to playing really tight.

good hands to start with, but down the road you need to add some more in there...
as in Ax and Kx suited, un suited

In low limit games, or freerolls this works good for the first hour. Teaches you to be tight and not chase. But after first hour, you have to open up your play, as you have developed a tight image after this first hour

Starting with these hands and becoming very good at playing them is a great foundation for your game. You will develop a "habit" of hand selctivity. A common weakness is playing too many hands. A lot of people get caught by the catch phrases of "changing gears" and "mixing it up" as a justification for playing too many hands.

If you play AK, AQ, any pocket pair and all suited connecters is quie a lot of hands in my opinion.. I never play low suited connecters. It also depends agaisnt what players you play

even when you have position? why dont you play these?

Too loose?? How can this be too loose?

Are you saying you don't ever play AJ in position? That's just playing too tight.

Helmuth's book and advice are both terrible. At the lowest limits you might be able to play those 15 hands and do okay. But any player with a pulse will realize that you are playing only 8% of your hands and be able to counter it easily. By stealing your blinds, and folding when you make a strong move at the pot if they don't have the goods.

Especially in late position, you should be playing more broadway cards, suited connectors and ace-x hands.

Very good advice, if it took position into account. You are almost guaranteed to be a profitable poker player at the lower levels playing a tight strategy such as this one (provided you learn about position).

Its not really much of a strategy, just a starting hand chart. The strategy would be how and when you play them. Hard to answer if its good or not without understanding how you play which hands in which positions IMO.

This strategy sounds to me like its for the beginning levels of a one table SNG . I don't see where else this can help one effectively in the long run.

It's like tight but not tight. You call playing 22 UTG a tight strategy? Or 23 suited?

If you're gonna play tight, play Sklansky tight. This is just a semi-tight strategy that is going to bleed away money out of position.

ok so as much as love taking every opportunity to criticize Hellmuth, pretty sure this is not what he said. I'm pretty sure this is what he said he'd tell someone who just learned the game and didn't know any strategy. It's hard to quickly teach someone position and all the ways to use it but if you want a way to maximize your chance of winning when basically you aren't very good at poker just playing the big hands is probably optimal especially in a non-deepstacked tourney where you don't have to worry about folding top pair post flop. Just play hands that flop top pair and get money in with them.

That are probably more than 15 hands.
It depends if you play any connector.
Otherwise it is a tight strategy for the beginning of a tournement...
If the blinds raise and antes appear you have to play more hands.

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I can't believe I'm defending Phil Helmuth , but neither his book nor his advice are "terrible"...for beginners, and that's what he wrote that for. It's actually the best book/advice out there *for beginners*, and one I recommend whenever anyone tells me they want to start playing. One would assume beginners would be playing $3/$6, aka "no foldem holdem", and playing those cards is about the only chance they'd have at beating that game.

Too much depends on situation, how many others in the pot etc....I tend to prefer siding with playing any two cards 10 or higher so long as you are not facing a big raise...you still need to be very careful when it comes to hands such as K-10, K-J, Q-10, Q-J, even K-Q....If I'm playing a 1-2 or 2-5 NL game I will raise with them in good position but if there is a raise in front of me that is more than 3-4 times the BB (more than 8$ in 1-2 and more than $15 in 2-5) I'm not calling with them unless their either suited or there are numerous other callers in front of me and I have odds, we all have seen how many times someone is holding K-Q and someone else has either A-K or A-Q. I generally run very close to what Helmuth describes there but I play a decent amount of junk as well from the button or cutoff, particularly if the table is playing very tight and I think I can bust one of the older rock players or female players trying to limp in with a big pair or high cards which we see pretty often.

He may say that, but he doesn't do that. He was shown in the WSOP episodes of last season raising OOP w/ J 4 offsuit & then later belittling some1 for raising w/ a much better hand later on in the tourney. Also calling names to some1 for beating him w/ a similar hand (10 4) that he had also played in the past.

Don't get me wrong, he's 1 of the top NLHE players in history but that doesn't mean he's allowed to contradict himself @ times. That by definition, would be a hypocrite.

Back to the topic though...

My point is...some advice is to be taken seriously & some isn't. Find your game & play the way that is best suited to you.

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He *mostly* plays good hands though, and because of that they typically chew him up on High Stakes Poker. Again, it's very sound advice for any newbie. I've actually written them down and handed them to people who are playing for the first time and said: "fold anything but these." Obviously that won't work at higher levels, but then again a newbie wouldn't be at that table would they?

I typically play "small ball", which is the exact opposite of PH's advice...but I'd never tell a newbie to do that.

Your right, there for when you learning, starting out... however when your on a real loose table, or a MTT with real loose players, i find his hand range works the best, with PP added....

Once i get a good stack then i start, adding more hands in...

Yes, but as others mentioned if you are novice, its better to play too few hands than too many. Against unsophisticated players it should work okay, and give you a solid base to improve on as you gain experience.

If you are playing sophisticated opponents, it won't take long for them to crack your starting hand code, surrendering preflop to you when you bet, and taking away blinds and your limps when you don't.

You are better off having a scale of hands that you will play in early position, a wider range in middle position, and a still wider range in late position. Really good opponents will still eventually figure out your ranges, but they are few and far between.

Good luck!

This advice is very good for those that can use it as a base and then play jazz around the theme. It establishs an image that can be used later in an event. It is also a good fallback after a bad beat to avoid the terrible tilt.

try playing that 2or3 handed and ill take all the blinds, it great for a final table

Anybody who wont play any hand heads up is likely to lose every heads up game they ever play... as the number of players at a table decreases your number of playable hands should increase until you reach heads up where you will play any two cards...

Too predictable. Good advice if you want to win small pots and lose big ones.

His stratergy may depend on the structure of the tourney - 60 minute levels in a live event are fine - but a 10 or 15 min level online structure paints a different picture.

ya its a good strategy but you want to be in more pots than that so people think you are reckless but when a lot of money goes into the middle you want to have a premium hand. But if you dont push the action you wont get action on your big hands. peace out

This is a good strategy for out.mid of position play, however your starting hands should open a bit in LP. You wouldn't want to fold a kq kj A10 AJ on button or cutoff, if your first one in, should raise. As someone mentioned this will give more potential value having a big hand in this position because they don't always put you on a monster.

I like hellmuth's strategy but, i usually only go all in if i have a pocket pair higher than 10 lol.. so many times gone all in with low pocket pairs and been screwed over!.. Hellmuth plays a strick and tough stragey that may not always work all the time

I can't think of a worse strategy for a final table.
Playable hands few and far between while the blinds are getting higher, a rigid predictable strategy is the last thing you want.
Jared1231 has it right - you should be playing more and more hands here as the number of players, and therefore the number of possible superior hands, decreases

Is this strategy just a tournament strategy or is it meant to apply to cash games as well?

i think it is meant to be played more towards cash games. i tried the strategy twice at 1 2 nl. first time at taj i won 135 in 4 hours and the second time at harrahs i got crushed for 350 when my KK got killed by A9 and having my 15 dollar raise called by 7 5 off when i had queens and he flopped the straight. i need to find a medium between small ball and this strategy as small ball gets me on tilt and drawn out on too easily.