AA is the nuts preflop so you only fold it pre in some rare tournament situations. However, I've always thought that in theory one could fold it in a cash game, if the opponent shoved pre, showed he has AA as well and there's not enough dead money in the pot to make up for the rake.

Ie. a very theoretical, live only situation.

However! I recently started to play poker again and there's this particular reg who otherwise plays fairly normally except he always just shoves AA pre, no matter the circumstances. According to thousands and thousands of hands, that's the only hand he plays that way. Always a straight shove.

So, what do we do if we have the (albeit very rare) other AA? Of course if someone else has called already or there's dead money in the pot, we call but what if it's a 1,5bb pot that he shoves into? Or I'm on the big blind with no callers? Or we're deep and losing hundreds of bb's to a lucky flush wouldn't make us happy?

We have the nuts but calling with them is losing play due to the rake, assuming no one else calls. And if someone else calls with eg. KK they have a bit more equity due to it being impossible for us to make a set and the deck having effectively 2 less cards to draw from (making his set more likely), as opposed to a normal AA vs KK situation. That of course doesn't tip the balance as calling is still +EV, just quite bit less so since you typically split the KK player's money with the other AA.

Call or fold and why?

I've folded the nuts on the turn/river multiple times in the past. On boards like KQJT.

AA you really shouldn't be folding pre though in cash games unless you really know with 99%+ certainty that he has the other two.

If you put them on exactly AA and you're 100% sure of this (as in not 99%), then its a straightforward EV calculation. If the blinds or whatever limpers don't make up for the rake, then fold. I've never in my life had this situation come up with AA though.

But its actually not super-rare that you fold AA pre in PLO. If you 3bet bad or marginal aces, then get 4bet by a tight player, and then a third player is committing themselves along the way, you're in pretty terrible shape.

Really? HU I know that AAxx always has at least 50% equity vs anything else.

Yeah HU you would never do it, problem is when a third player commits themselves so you can’t get to HU. Even just normal 4bets in SSPLO are pretty AA heavy and you shouldn’t really be thrilled with getting it in with dry aces but vs known tight players it’s certain you’re blocking each other’s outs so you should find a fold.

Equity pre flop for scenario of AA vs AA vs KK is not equal. One set of AA has higher equity due to position. Also, since all suits of A are taken, depends on the suits for KK. KK still on the low totem pole. Try the scenarios yourself. Of course, this is pre flop.

I was doing some EV calculations and a third (or fourth...) player entering the hand as well don't make this that great a spot either. The reason is that most of the time when you win, you split the pot with the other AA.

100bb preflop all in in a AA vs AA vs KK vs 67s situation makes 12bb on average (and that's not rake adjusted...), if I did my calculations correctly.

So if eg. UTG shoves with the AA, you call from UTG+1 with the other AA you lose to the rake if no one else calls but even if they do you don't make nearly as much money as AA usually makes preflop.

I think if he's silly enough to shove AA preflop, deep-stacked, he can potentially have other hands at a high enough frequency to justify a call, especially is rake it capped at a few dollars. I know that's not a very analytical answer... but just the odds alone of you both having the 1 combination of AA vs him having just 1/6 combinations of KK or even QQ argue for a call.