How should I have played this hand?

I'm still new to the game and learning through experience. The villian in this hand has been raising a lot preflop in position and made continuation bets what seemed like 100% of the time. I know my turn bet was huge, I really don't remember why I made that big of a bet. I felt ahead all through the hand and it looked like a good chance for a semi-bluff. I bet the rest on the river with the small chance he'd fold a missed low draw, even though all of our money was in the pot anyway. How should I have played this hand?

Omaha 8 hand

[Mendacious]

I'll take a stab. I think you played it WAY too passive up front, pre-flop and on the flop. Also your huge re-raise on the turn unfortunately is a bet that if called means you are toasted. This is misplaced aggression, you have no low, and a weak hi. Do you think your raise was credible? I assume you were raising to chase. You called a big pre-flop raise, (So he probably puts you on A2) then check/call the flop with 2 low cards and a queen. What hand is he supposed to put you on when you check/raise the turn because a non-suited 9 falls? A2J10? That is the ONLY hand that remotely fits your betting pattern, and, frankly your raise is too oversized to fit that hand. So I am sure he thought his Q hi was good and he had a draw to the nut low (just like you) so he called.

That being said, your was in fact a sizable underdog on the turn and made a much bigger mistake and got lucky.

This is the kinda stuff that I do when I am on Tilt that just exacerbates the problem. You make subtle mistakes and then get clobbered by a suckout because your play did not come across as real strength, but as weakness/desperation. There is a razor thin line here-- which is why I generally do better when I play with a lower variance style, not the Ribbo, Wintermute hyper-aggressive way, (your turn raise-- not the pre-flop and flop passive stuff). This type of style mixing can lead to really annoying results too often for my psyche and it affects my play-- perpetuating the problem.

Or to put it differently, if you play a hand cautiously then suddenly inexplicably radically change styles to hyper-aggressiveness, when your hand has not improved, bad results often flow.