[Starfall]

AAT8 single-suited is not a great hand pre-flop - it's definitely worth playing in PLO, but with virtually no low potential it's marginal at best in PLO8. When you get a raise pre-flop, there's a good change that you'll be against someone with at least half-decent low potential, and then if a low hits you lose half the pot, pretty much every time, so a lot of the time you won't get much back. In limit it may still be worth a look, because more people are liable to stay in, it won't cost you too much, etc, but in Pot Limit it's a dangerous hand to play, especially when you're likely to be either heads-up or against only 2 opponents.

The flop was pretty bad for you, as while you got 2 pair, you then had little chance for improving, while a low became likely to occur. Additionally, if your opponents had 2 spades with a low draw, then they have a reasonable chance to scoop you.

The turn gave you the nut hand for high, but it also meant that you were almost certain to lose the low. At that point, you could raise the pot to try to push them out, but you have to consider you have no chance of improving to scoop the low, while they have a chance of improving to scoop you, while otherwise you'll split the pot, so they're freerolling to take all your chips, which is exactly the situation you don't want when you're putting all your chips in.

There are 2 scenarios here - they have a non-nut low, and can be pushed off, but you need to bet very strongly to do this. If you suspect them of having a non-nut low and raise, if you get raised back then you have to expect that you're being freerolled. The other is that he has the nut low, and then you either want to fold the hand (losing a little bit but saving risking all your chips just to get a few extra back), or save your chips for the river, and hope that the card is one that may counterfeit his hand, and make a big raise then to try to try to push him off the pot. The downside of that strategy here is that any card that could counterfeit his hand could also make him a wheel, and counterfeit yours, so it would be a risky play.

The best approach would have been to fold pre-flop because you knew you were probably against someone who would beat you for a low - one-way-only hands, even good ones like this lose a lot of value in PLO8. Seeing a big raise on the flop, with the dangers that the flop gave to your hand, you probably shouldn't have continued playing there either - you could put in a pot-sized raise to try to push off a low-only drawing hand, but would get called by exactly the kind of flush and low draw hands that would take all your chips because they'd have enough outs to call anyway. The turn ensured you were only after half the pot, and didn't do much to stop you being liable to get scooped (only making a full house would have done that). Everything said fold, IMHO.