Playing aces passively

[soah]

Last week I was playing in a game with $1/$1 blinds. The game is loose/passive with many hands going unraised before the flop. Sometimes people will randomly bet $12 all-in with QT and get called by A5 and K8s. Sometimes big raises do mean really big hands though. My opponent in this hand has been overbetting the pot regularly when she makes 2 pair, a set, etc. (And someone always pays her off, of course.) Some of the hands she plays are pretty trashy. Earlier I raised with AK and she busted me after making 2 pair on the turn with K5 after I was fairly committed to the pot.

I am reconstructing the hand in question from memory so details will be somewhat sketchy. I think I had around $70; she had quite a bit more. She was in early position, I was somewhere around the CO.

Pre-flop: She opens for a raise to $7. It's folded to me; I have AA. I haven't seen this from her yet, so I am assuming she has a premium hand, but I'm not yet ruling out hands like AT or 99. I decide just to call in hopes that someone else might tag along, and so that she'll bet into me on the flop.

Flop: The flop is 998 rainbow. She does indeed bet into me; about $10. This is definately not the flop I was hoping for, but I think it's pretty unlikely she holds a 9. If she raised with 88 then I'm screwed. Normally she overbets the pot if she has trips, so I put her on something else. I consider raising, but I'm afraid that doing so may cause her to fold hands that have very few outs (basically any hand other than JT, which I doubt she'd raise to $7 with). I definately don't want to scare her off if she holds something like AK which is nearly drawing dead. If I'm wrong and she does have me beaten, then of course I don't want to raise. I'd also like her to keep betting into me with a weaker hand.

Turn/River: The turn is a brick. She bets into me again, around $20. I call for the same reason as I did on the flop. The river is another brick, and she bets about $15. Calling here leaves me with some chips. The fact that she bet less on the river than the turn makes me even more certain that my aces are still good. I consider pushing, but decide against it. She's not a maniac, and she knows I'm not a calling station. Raising with unimproved aces at the river simply doesn't seem like good play. I call; she shows JJ, I win a pretty big pot.

I've had nagging doubts about this hand ever since it happened. By playing passively, I was able to get her to invest quite a bit of money trying to make her overpair hold up. I don't know if she respects my play enough (and is good enough) to fold at any point in this hand had I raised. Normally I don't play aces like this, but normally the pot isn't raised 7BB in front of me... did I play the hand badly or was it ok to simply let her continue firing every round?

[gomberg]

My usuall style for playing AA against a solid early raise is to reraise, as you want to get as much money in preflop as you can when you have the nuts. When someone raises early, they very likely do have AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AK, etc. So if you reraise preflop, you take away implied odds and they might push back at you.

The time to slowplay is against a very aggressive opponent who will continute to bluff the hand. The other caveat to this is that I like to have position and have it be almost for sure heads up, and the raiser has to not be in early position.

I've only done this a couple times. once in a 5-10 game a late position player raised to $140 dollars (we both had over $1000) and I knew he was a maniac but I had a tight image and he might slow down if I showed strength, so I just called on the button. If he raises here early, I put him on KK and reraise here hoping he pushes, but late, he could literally have many many hands. Needless to say, I took another $800 from him before it was over - and he had a pocket pair like 77 and tried to get me off my hand when no A or K flopped. I thought the risk reward was worth it in this hand - if he did beat me, he was going to get a lot of my money, but I knew at best he had around a 20% shot, and that I'd get most of his money the other 80% unless I flopped big and he didn't, where I'd only win a part of his stack.