Context: 1/2 NL Hold'Em game at the Venetian. 9 players; table has been mostly passive pre-flop with multiple limpers to the flop.
Perceptions: For the past couple hours, when I've raised to $8 or $10 pre-flop, typically everyone folds. If I get a caller, a continuation bet usually drives them out. Thus, I presume people view me as tight. In response, I've been calling some loose hands (don't recall if they were even shown) and even limped with pocket aces (which I did show) since I was afraid everyone would fold to my raise.
For the villain, I played one hand heads up previously. I had K♥ T♥ and the board flopped a 10 with two spades. I made a continuation bet that he called. Third spade hit the turn and we both checked. Fourth spade hits the river, and it's a K so I happen to get two-pair. I bet (I think $60 into an ~$55 pot). Villain comments (slightly irritated) how lucky I am and folds. As to how this hand affected the villain's perceptions of me, it's hard to say.
The Hand: Our hero has $400 and is UTG or UTG+1. He looks down and sees A♥ A⋄. After very briefly debating whether to raise, or limp and try to be tricky, hero raises to $10. Folds around to villain near the cutoff, who calls. Our villain has about $440.
Flop is J-7-5. I believe it was a rainbow flop.
Hero bets $20, expecting to just take the pot there. Villain raises to $80.
Question: What do you do with your pocket rockets? Push all-in? Fold?
What our hero was thinking:
My gut reaction was that the villain may have a set. But I didn't think he'd re-raise there. Hard to justify; just my gut. As to JJ, I believe he would have re-raised with that hand so I discounted it. 6-8 seems plausible; I've seen players try that (when they believe their opponent has a high pocket pair). A pair of 9s or 10s seemed plausible as well; use a raise to get me to fold. Based on that, and the double up opportunity staring me in the face, I figured I was ahead in most cases so I pushed.
What happened:
The hero pushes and the villain near-instantly calls. The hero reveals his hand and the villain comments that our hero is behind. The turn is a 10 and the river is a 5. The 5 feels particularly good, for a moment, as the hero now has two pair. Unfortunately, the villain is holding J5h and has made a boat. Since then, I've gone through the hand repeatedly and suspect two things went wrong. First - I was very unlucky against a well disguised hand. I went from being a 4:1 favorite pre-flop to a 3:1 underdog. Further, because I was out of position pre-flop, I had no opportunity to re-raise had the villain raised first. Second - I forgot the old adage; big bets usually mean a big hand. Seemingly out of nowhere, there's a raise to $80. While that seemed like an opportunity in the heat of the moment, it should have set off alarm bells as well.