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I have my own way of playing Aces and it tends to work. One, if I have a big stack I am raising to the point that only strong hands can call, no more bad beats for Rich, though it still happens on occasion. Two, if short stacked, I slow roll and hope others might limp and of course push to any raise, this way I get as many chips into the pot and then double or triple up. This strategy worked perfectly on Full Tilt after suffering a bad beat suckout that took me from CL to almost out of the tourney. Just my opinion but this seems to work for me, so far.

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This is a trend that a lot of novice players get into and it is completely and totally the wrong way to look at this situation. When you have aces preflop you should not be looking to push people out of the pot as much as you seem to think you should. You want the smaller pairs, weaker aces and donkeys with sooooted cards along for the ride. The odds are in your favor here, especially against all the hands I just listed. Your opponent will outflop you on rare occasions, but the statistics prove that AA will hold up against a random hand 85% of the time and that does NOT change when you give the villain a tighter range like 88-KK,AKs/o,AQs/o. Why you would want to push out people with weaker starting hands is beyond me. Sure you hear lots of bad beat stories regarding pocket aces, but how many of those stories involve someone who misplayed the hand and ended up hanging himself? I think a lot of cases of Aces being beat fall into this category. On the opposite end of the spectrum, however, a properly played AA has a great chance of allowing a player to double up his chips. You don't want to miss this opportunity by playing the hand so hard that nobody wants to get in the pot with you.

Granted, going to a flop with 7 players holding AA isn't the best scenario but you still have the most equity in the pot in this situation. You're not the underdog in the hand unless the flop helps one of your opponents. I actually think the biggest problem in a scenario like this is your last 2 aces are likely to be dead cards in someone elses hand and your chances to improve are that much worse - leaving a smaller pocket pair with a chance of making a set and beating my big pair which is something the Aces can't do if the two remaining ones are held in other players' hands.

Things like this do happen but it does not mean that you want to push out hands that you could win more chips from. The idea here is to win other peoples chips and if you're purposely wasting pocket aces to steal blinds or win a tiny, meaningless pot then you are not likely to make it very far in a tournament. Play to take your opponent's chips - don't make it easy for him to keep them in his stack. Make it so that a player holding a medium pocket pair will play with you (and lose) - invite the AK,AQ,KQ,KJ type hands to call and come along for the ride (granted, hands like AK are usually coming along regardless).

As far as your strategy on Fill Tilt one night - that's results oriented thinking and goes against everything you said you're looking to do with a big stack. Why change your strategy when you are short stacked and have a greater chance of being knocked out of the tournament? Isn't this a time where you want to see a flop against a few opponents rather than the whole table of limpers? Why is this play good with the small stack but when you have a lot of chips to play with you are looking to minimize your action? It just seems to me that changing your strategy here puts you in the exact situation that you are trying to avoid when you have a big stack and you are raising people out of the pot.

If you're going to play scared that your aces are always going to suffer a bad beat perhaps you should take up Candyland or Tiddlywinks instead.