During the first two years of the LHD experiment the following resultshave been achieved: (i) higher Te (Te(0) = 4.4 keV at ⟨ne⟩ = 5.3 × 1018 m-3and Pabs = 1.8 MW); (ii) higher confinement (τE = 0.3 s, Te(0) = 1.1 keV at ⟨ne⟩ = 6.5 × 1019 m-3and Pabs = 2.0 MW); (iii) higher stored energy, Wpdia = 880 kJ at B = 2.75 T. High performance plasmas have been realized in the inward shifted magneticaxis configuration (R = 3.6 m) where helical symmetry is recovered and the particle orbitproperties are improved by a trade-off of MHD stability properties due to the appearance of amagnetic hill. Energy confinement was systematically higher than that predicted by theInternational Stellarator Scaling 95 by up to a factor of 1.6 and was comparable with theELMy H mode confinement capability in tokamaks. This confinement improvement is attributed to configuration control (inward shift of the magnetic axis) and to the formation of a high edgetemperature. The average beta value achieved reached 2.4% at B = 1.3 T, the highest betavalue ever obtained in a helical device, and so far no degradation of confinement by MHDphenomena has been observed. The inward shifted configuration has also led to successful ICRFminority ion heating. ICRF powers up to 1.3 MW were reliably injected into the plasma withoutsignificant impurity contamination, and a plasma with a stored energy of 200 kJ was sustainedfor 5 s by ICRF alone. As another important result, long pulse discharges of more than 1 min were successfully achieved separately with an NBI heating of 0.5 MW and with an ICRFheating of 0.85 MW.