Simple question: got KKAxx, first to act, should I draw 3 cards or 2?

Raise and discard 3.

Reasons:
1) you should generally discard 3 with all pairs anyway for a balanced strategy (makes you harder to read)
2a) if you are beat by aces predraw you don't want to draw at aces up, you need that extra card from drawing 3 to increase your chances of trips/two pair. Obviously there is only one ace left to catch in that situation which makes it a terrible draw.
2b) if you are beat by something other than aces, the vast majority of the itme that will be a lower two pair or trips than kings, so again you want to max your chances of drawing to beat it. this is achieved best by drawing 3.
3) if you aren't beat, it generally doesn't matter what your kicker is with kings - very rarely will kickers come into play - and you should maximise your drawing potential to try to make kings up or better so that you can max your chances of collecting one or more big bets postdraw.

IMO drawing 2 should only be reserved for very specific situations in which you hold trips and have a high certainty you need to improve. Most of the time though, you should just draw 1 with trips because it's much more deceptive and it's very unlikely you will be beaten.

By the way, KKxxx should commonly be mucked from UTG if you do not hold an ace with it. This is because the ace blocks your opponents holding the hands which beat you or drawing to beat you that need an ace. However in loose games IMO it is acceptable to not follow this rule because people will be frequently calling your raise with lower pairs from all positions.

Thank you for the great explanation!

I agree wholeheartedly with Lucius' reasons 2a, 2b, and 3, but I disagree with reason 1. Discarding 2 cards is a common strategy in draw hi. Only drawing 2 when you have trips means your hand is face-up when you draw 2 and have trips and is also face-up when you draw 3 since you almost for sure have a pocket pair.

With that said, I think it is a draw 3 spot with KKAxx since kings up is likely to win if it's two pair vs two pair, whereas if you had 66Axx, you want to make aces up, not eights up or whatever.

As for folding KKxxx utg (presumably 6max) without an ace, this feels tight to be but maybe it's a good strat. I'll be curious to hear what others say.

On the face of it that seems significantly advantageous, but if you get spotted doing this with any frequency you won't get paid off in these situations when you start being aggressive.

That's because when you do this it's very obvious what you have.

What is better is to draw 3 and play poker with whatever you get dealt on the draw. If you think you're going to struggle to make those good decisions when you draw a mid or low two pair for example, maybe it is a fold pre. In single raised pots it's not generally profitable to come in for a call with a small pair anyway.

FTR I didn't advocate "drawing 2 with trips only"; rather i advocated not drawing 2 ever, except some very very specific situations where for example it is capped pre and you have something like 22234. you're going to need to improve. That comes up very rarely, and yeah it's unbalanced and easy to read, but typically in those spots your opponent is not keen on folding (usually will have 333+ and pats there) at any point, so you might as well draw as many as possible to beat him to exploit his unwillingness to fold when you make your hand.

No, you just want to win ) , and for that it's much better to have 666, so you have to draw 3 to increase this probability.
The only case when you have to keep A and draw 2 - when you know for sure that you are against doper.

Raise and if u get it HU then pat and check behind after drawing and collect the pot 3/5 times. This will add "idiot-odds" for when u have a real pat hand dealt before draw.

edit: pat two pair too (if u r the open-pater... is open-pater a term?). U will gain pot-control almost every hand u play.