Ahead or not ahead, is that a question?

[Harv72b]

I don't agree with all of JJNJustin's reasoning, but I do agree with him on folding the ducks here. That's a hand that I absolutely hate to play, especially out of position, and even more so when out of position in a short-handed pot. And with your read on Button, you're going to be playing it OOP very often when you open from the CO.

It's even trickier when you know your opponent is crazy aggressive postflop (as a lot of 10/20 players are capable of being), so you have no real way of guaging where you stand in the hand unless you hit a set. So yeah, unless the players behind you are very tight and likely to respect your openraise, I'd just muck the deuces here.

As far as postflop, I'm undecided on your flop play. Ordinarily it would be better to lead into Button & wait for him to autoraise & knock the BB out, but I'm sure that BB has picked up a similar read on Button and could call 2 on the flop the same as he did preflop. Your check/raise shows much more strength to BB than leading into the aggro player, and is more likely to get him to fold I think, especially when Button goes ahead and 3-bets it anyway. You also gain the advantage of being able to fold pretty confidently if BB check/raises him first.

I think you do have check/call to showdown given your read, but I still don't like having to do it with 22. And it really sucks that you're essentially drawing dead to any larger pocket pair at that point.