How do you play Aces?

Raise PF and then continue to play them aggressively, never slow play.

Mogwai got it spot on. Also, if I am in late position and there has been a limper or two, or a raise before it gets to me, I'll stick in a substantial raise/re-raise to weed out the speculative hands.

Basically, play them aggressively. If you get to the flop and there are 3, 4, 5 players or more you have a big chance of them getting cracked. Ideally you want to be up against just one person on the flop.

If the flop looks dangerous, with something like a big flush draw or straight draw and your aces have missed those draws, tread carefully.

And never slow play them unless you are very confident. I know some top players slow play them, but the amount of times I have seen players limp with AA and the big blind has some junk like 7-4. The flop comes down 2-4-7, the AA pushes all-in because it looks like a safe flop and the guy in the BB position says "Thank you very much". I've cracked aces myself several times with junk because I was let in cheap.

I just checked my Poker Office stats for Full Tilt:

Cash Games: 1,931 hands - I had AA 7 times, won 7 times (100%)
Sit n Go: 7,724 hands - I had AA 39 times, won 37 times (94.87%)

Total: 9,655 hands - I had AA 46 times, won 44 times (95.65%)

So I know the aggressive approach works

No doubt - play them aggressive early - or you'll get bitten by the hand you can't lay down. Playing them hard means you'll either take a few blinds, or someone will push you and you end up all in one-on-one a clear favourite. Get your chips in when you are 100% favourite! :-) If they get cracked - live with it - if you don't put your chips in as 100% favourite you are losing a large part of your winnings.

There are of course some little games you can play with Aces to maximise your winnings depending on the players and situations, some examples are:

On a table with a very aggressive player, who is constantly preflop raising, and reraising any competition - put a raise in, but not quite as strong as you normally would - i.e. show a little timidity. He'll raise over the top of you. Pretend to dwell on this then push all in as if you are being a donk. He'll call :-)

When you have just had a raise re-raised and you were forced to fold, or any hand where you just lost a good chunk of chips - then you get dealt AA (and KK for that matter)- push all-in immediately with no hesitation - looks like you are tilting and you'll get callers with any Ace or high pairs. Works all the time :-)

Heads up: now this IS a good time to slow play :-)

Basically you want an all-in caller whenever you have Aces - , two callers is nice too - but any more than that gets frightening.

Slow play them and you will let all sorts of odd hands hit. AA does not beat two pairs of any description :-)

True

When I already see 2 people go all-in PF before I'm on turn, I even sometimes fold AA. Doesn't happen a lot, but it mostly turns out to be a good fold.
I play AA aggressive too. Don't think slowplay would make you win.

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2 people before me all-in preflop and I have AA - I'm in there! tripple up! No way would I miss that one. I'd consider laying KK in the same position if it threatened too many of my chips.

You are crazy to fold AA pre flop. You have the best starting hand possible, not playing it is ultra nitty and a major leak in your game. The only time I would ever remotely consider folding is on the bubble of a satellite where finsihing position doesn't matter - even then I would need to have a larger than average chip stack.

I've never folded AA or KK pre-flop. The highest hand I have folded is QQ which I have done a few times. Everytime I have folded QQ it was the right decision with AA or KK being out there. Once I raised from early position with QQ. There was a big re-raise after me followed by an all-in. I folded them and watched AA v AK. A King hit the flop but no Queens came out so I would have lost against either player. Folding hands like that is almost as good a feeling as winning the pot

agreed, but there is one situation i might flatcall aces ..
and that's if im SB and it's folded to me so only the BB is left.
Raising in that situation might lose your only costumer or you get lucky if he thinks you are makin a move. So it really depends on what type of players are at the table etc but i would say raise/raise/raise...

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Play them aggressive early because there is a great chance that someone of the 9 remaining will get at least 2 pairs .....And losing like that,it hurts,trust me....