Playing AA Preflop vs. Standard TAGs

I'm going to save my session review graphs, etc. for the end of the month, and instead focus on posting a few more helpful strategy articles on the blog. After reading a thread on 2+2 today on the subject of playing AA preflop, it occurred to me that maybe I hadn't given this topic enough thought.

Lets consider two situations:

Situation 1
It is folded around to a regular 14/9/2 TAG in MP, who raises to 4BB. We hold AA in the CO, and after the open raise it is folded to us. Obviously we aren't folding - and the standard play here is to raise. Should we ever get tricky here and just call behind? If you really think about it, the answer is clearly that we should always raise (raising an appropriate amount of course, around 3.5x the initial bet) so that our opponent has terrible odds to set mine. Why is it so much better to raise here when we are likely folding out 2/3rds of our villain's range, all of which we are ahead of (22-TT, AJ, sometimes AQ, KQo, etc)? Without going into too much detail, we want to build a pot while we are ahead, while narrowing his range to hands he is likely to stack off to us with while he is behind.

For example, our villain probably doesn't call our 3-bet with 44, which we are ahead of. That said, we probably also don't pick up further value from 44 postflop unless our villain hits his set (where we potentially lose a lot of money), so it's a good thing to fold him out preflop. By sizing our 3-bet appropriately, we make it a majorly -EV play for him to call with his 44, even if we give him our stack every time he hits his set. However, our villain does likely call with AK, sometimes AQ, QQ, and sometimes JJ. These hands all potentially allow the villain to lose his stack to us when they become overpairs/TPTK hands. Further, our villain is likely to 4-bet KK, which makes it a near certainty that we get to play for stacks preflop where we are a 85% favorite.

Situation 2
Next, lets consider us having AA in MP. It is folded to us, and we raise to 4BB. Villain in the CO 3-bets us an appropriate amount to 15BB. Should we raise or fold? Gut instinct here will sometimes tell us to 4-bet. However, if we 4-bet the villain, we likely only get further value from KK, and maybe rarely sometimes QQ or even AKs. That said, because our villain is a standard TAG, his 3-bet range is probably something like {JJ+, AQ+}. Against these hands, we can extract significantly more value post-flop when our villain makes TPTK or an overpair should we cold call the 3-bet, rather than raising. This cold call is an especially dangerous weapon because our hand looks a lot like AK/AQ/JJ/QQ, and most villains will c-bet the flop if checked to. This is great, because after a 3/4 pot sized bet into what was a 3-bet pot preflop, our villain should already have 25BB+ of his stack committed, and it's going to become harder for him to fold.

Against a spewing donkey, we probably can't misplay this hand either way, we just want to get the money in ASAP.

I'll be playing my usual weekend volume of $50NL this weekend along with the $100k monthly freeroll for Gold Star+. I may as well spoil the surprise that I'm going to hit Platinum Star this month, which will further increase my rakeback. Huzzah!