Well Adam, I seemed to have had a similar problem to yours last night. I built my stack up early, mainly by hitting big hands. But after my initial rise, I couldn't seem to get anything going. When I did pick up a playable hand, well, it was pretty much the two hands that you posted about.
Don's all-in hand, that one was a good read on the situation, moreso than a read on any individual player. I was going to reraise Don, but you had to jump in there first. By doing that, I figured that my JJ probably wasn't favored to win (I might have been ahead of AK or AQ, but I'd rather fold than run into AA, KK, or QQ...which is the type of hand that I was wrongly putting you on). Also, even if I was wrong about my read on you, I still had (at least) Don to worry about behind me, so I thought it would be better to fold there.
On your AA hand, I thought once again, that at best I would be in a coinflip situation. I was a dog to any pocket pair, and AA or QQ had me crippled. AK also had me dominated there. Like you said to me last night though, a smaller bet and you probably would have taken a lot of my chips (unless that board came out with a few spades...then you would have been royally pissed at me).
Oddly enough, after those laydowns, I ended up busting (well, all but $1) with AQ. Unfortunately, Don and myself were the shortstacks at the table, and he picked up a pair of 6's when I pushed. So he decided to made the call knowing it was a gamble, but they held up for him.
To paraphrase Raymer's exit speech from this year's WSOP, poker isn't necessarily about the results as much as it is the decisions. Even though neither you nor myself won, I would say that we both made the correct decisions throughout the night, and you can't be disappointed in that.
i agree, good decisions is about all you can do in poker. can't help what cards hit after that.
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