You must re-raise PF against a raiser to show strength and give yourself a chance to take it down on the flop if he misses with AK/AQ or 1010/99/88

If not then he will assume he has the best hand since you called (wether or not this is true, this will position you in a difficult spot) otherwise you are only hoping to catch a set because that flop did not have any A,K,Q or 10 and you still folded, had you re-raised pf, and seen him re-raise you, you could have wisely decided to fold there and probably saved you money but if you don't do that, then your re-raised re-raise on flop puts you in a tough spot where you don't know anymore.

Although he probably has the best hand here in most cases I have seen in numerous cases where villain has AK,AQ here. It is just impossible to know now that you have not re-raised PF.

Though most of the time you will be facing QQ,KK,AA here I -still- think this is a good fold, but not the optimal way to do it.

I debated hard against reraising, but I thought that if I could hit the J I would stack him if he had an overpair. I didn't hit, but since the cards were all low I thought I could maybe fold AKAQ. Looking back, this reasoning doesn't exactly work since you're right - his hand range is so large.

All in all I think this play allowed me to fold pretty safely, but it was very expensive to do so and ate about half my stack.

Is calling here for set value and simply folding it to his flop bet that bad? Or is the reraising play, fold to a 4bet better? What happens if he calls my reraise, does that mean I have to play for stacks now? What scares me is, if he's calling my reraise, he most likely does not have AKAQ at that point, and so any flop bets would be against a better hand.

Is it one of those, reraise, if he calls, assume he has a better hand, and then check fold on nonJ flops?

--- Nuked ---

you committed 1/3 of your stack to fold. either flat that flop and re-evaluate turn, or you need to push him when he re-raises. you dont commit large portions of your stack for plays like this.