Can you just play the top ten hands in Texas Hold'em and be a winner?

It's a good strategy, but it's still not enough. First of all, you'll rarely win a tournament with this strategy. The strategy is better suited for cash games.

Second, you can't just "play the top ten hands". You have to play the top ten hands WELL. If you're going to play with such a strategy, you've got to know exactly what to do when you have those hands. You also probably shouldn't stay at any one table for very long. Once people figure you out, you won't get any action.

Just take 1 hand as an example - pocket aces. Obviously one of the "top ten" hands. In fact it's #1. However, if you don't know what to do with aces, then they can RUIN you sometimes.

Waiting for just the premium hands is usually a recipe for losing in the long run for 2 reasons:

1) They don't come along often and in the meantime you'll be bleeding away chips to the blinds (even faster if you also have an ante, tho that usually is only a factor in tournaments.)

2) Other players will likely pick up on the fact you're what's known as a 'rock' and you'll have trouble getting action when those good hands do come along. Nothing more annoying than picking up pocket rockets and only scoring the blinds with them.

Not a chance

A)You will be losing money every time you pass your blinds

B)The style is highly exploitable

C)Playing such a narrow range, it is profitable to limp/call with marginal hands that play better after the flop hands like 97 are the hands that have the best shot of beating the 10 hands you play

You can probably win at very small stakes cash games with that. If you can be patient enough. There are a lot of hands... just waiting for top ten could take awhile

realize that you're not going to get the best hands any more than your opponents will. if you only play the great ones, it'll be easy for your opponents to see that you only play these hands, and they'll fold when you finally hit something.

not only that, but you'll also end up sitting at the table doing nothing for hours on end as you wait for that great hand to pop up. it's boring poker.

well, probably not. Assuming that your table has blinds and ante, you will be bleeding money while you wait for your hand. Plus, if you only play awesome hands, once you actually play a hand, everyone at the table will know you are a "rock" who only plays great hands, and they will fold.