Hey, I've just been watching Andrew Neeme's latest upload, and the following hand came up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWRAmVDCdMI&t=8m57s

Blinds are presumably $2/$5. MP opens to $15. Hero is in some LP seat and calls with A2

What do we think about this flat? I might be folding here ... is that super nitty? I think if i were to play this hand it would likely be as a 3b in this situation.

Can some players post a flatting range here? Maybe add in a 3b range? I'm more thinking about the $1/2 - $2/5 games rather than the $5/$10 which Andrew usually plays in. I play in the former.

Cheers!

Folding is a bit too tight with this hand in position. I would typically threebet though.

Threebetting fairly aggressively here against a typical player, something like { 88+, A2s+, T9s, 98s, 87s, 76s, AJo+, KQo } (11.6%). The more marginal stuff like AJo, KQo and the suited connectors you can certainly fold, not a huge fan of flatting them.

Flatting range pretty small given that we're heads up in position, probably flatting { 77-22,KTs+,QTs+,JTs } (4.5%). I think flatting the small pairs is pretty mandatory, not a fan of threebetting them. The suited broadways if you want to threebet with them, that's fine, but I like to have things in my flatting range other than pairs and those hands have very good playing strength, so taking a flop in position can work well.

This is a smallish raise for 2/5.

With effective stacks of $1500, this is fine.

With effective stacks of $200 or less this is probably bleeding money.

Some of it is going to depend on whether the players behind us have been agreesive preflop and whether there are shortstacks that might jam on us.

Fold would be standard. With a deep stack and a small raise both flatting and raising occasionally are OK in the right situation. Obviously if there is a short stack behind hero ready to shove then just fold.

To flat I'm looking for effective $750+ so hero can get paid big on the good hands because there are going to be a lot of folded flops. Also don't flat very often if there is a squeeze happy villain behind hero. For raising I'm looking for a loose villain or one that will fold to a 3 bet.

This. All stack size and remaining opponent dependent.

Along with the above requirements needed to play this hand, when you're recording for a vlog & have a choice of putting the hand in the video or not, this one could turn out to be quite entertaining for your viewers & may sell a few t-shirts.

It depends on who opened, from what position, how big they opened, their stack size, what I think their range looks like, how they play Vs a 3bet, how they play postflop, my position, my stack size, my perceived style/competence, other players still live in the hand and their positions/styles/stack-sizes. Also is anyone involved in the hand tilted or got any specific history with other players in the hand?

Against a 3x open, with reasonably deep stacks, calling or 3 betting are both fine here, and I would probably do a mix of both.

We flop a flush about one hand in 100 or so.

(Not exact number but close enough.)

Fifteen bucks times 100 hands is $1500.

How are we going to make more than $1500 when we flop a flush draw or A2? Just how deep do we need to be to make that even realistic - and then we have to "run it" a few hundred times? Hmm...

We sure are not going to make $1500 flopping top pair no kicker.

We need to have quite an (inflated?) estimation of our post flop skills against our particular table of Villains if we plan to make more than $1500 net trying to steal pots from late position when we miss our nut flush flop 99 times out of 100.

(Oops, forgot to emphasize that we miss most flush draws after the flop (nine outs twice is about 36%), and sometimes get stacked when someone fills up against our "nut" flush, but never mind, you get the idea.)

Sometimes, there is a fine line between "riding the variance train" and "spew". Not saying this is past the line, but it seems to be in a nearby zip code at best. But that's just my opinion. Many a hero likes to play A2 suited for a 3x raise, I am not one of them. Maybe if it is already a family pot? Otherwise, not my favorite spot.

YMMV.

You could do a similar "analysis" for villain where you reflect that most of his raising range is unpaired cards and he misses the flop the majority of the time and that he'd "need to have quite an (inflated?) estimation of his post flop skills against Hero" if he's planning to bully Hero out of the pot whenever he misses. What matters is that A2s has reasonable equity (> 40%, probably) against villain's raising range and that we have position. The rest of the post is obfuscation of these facts.