Assessment of Wilson TTH Pre-Flop Strategy

[brianmarc]

After reading that C. Moneymaker practiced with the Wilson system I've been working extensively with it to improve my HE SH skills. One major strategy all the TTH Advisors have is that you ALWAYS open-bet with a raise. I have not seen explicitly anywhere else (and I've read the dozen or so top books on the game). Truth is, in using this approach in games all the way from 3/6 up to 30/60, it seems to work since it immediately establishes you as an extremely aggressive player, and, since the TTH rules are also very tight, I have learned to play nerveless TA quite rapidly. However, this approach requires you to be extremely disciplined when your flops miss, particularly in EP’s, and that you not auto-bet as the player with the lead. (In the lower limits of the games I play the pre-flop raiser will bet 90%+ of the time if no-one has already bet. It’s so common that check-raising on any decent hand is a no-brainer if you sit to the open-raiser’s left.).

I am interested in comments from the community regarding this 100% open-raise strategy. If you don’t agree, what hands would you simply call with when first to bet.