1/2 live hand - curious about a read/tell

[radii]

Before last week, I'd never played live poker past a few home games. I spent last week up in Atlantic City and spent a ton of time in the Borgata poker room, mainly playing 1/2 NL.

First, the hand:

Preflop: MP player opens to $15. Two loose/terrible players call behind, they could have any two. I call $13 more from the BB with KJ hearts. I don't have a good read on MP, he hasn't played a ton of hands though. I have a $350 stack and think I have a loose image, limping a lot in position. Pot is $61.

Flop: Flop is Jx 4d 3d. MP(the raiser) shows some visible distress when the flop comes. He shrugs and looks a bit unhappy. I came up to AC terrified of whether I could read players or not, but throughout the entire week saw people just completely give away their hands, the frustration in a check, resignation to losing in a bet, etc. And I have yet to see someone really do the "weak means strong" thing with any success at 1/2 NL. I am fairly quick to put the guy on AK or AQ or some other whiff of the flop. I check, hoping he or someone will bet and i can checkraise. He does follow through with a bet of $40, the other two players fold. I decide to follow through, and I check-raise to $140. Raiser thinks for a time and pushes all in.

At this point I'm fairly crushed. I'm trying to put him on a range, but I'm still gaining experience here and am not beyond getting a little flustered. I assume I'm beat but never really narrow a specific range. His all in is only for $102 more. The pot is $440. I'm getting 4.4:1 to call. I tell him I think he just totally played me and congrats, and that I hope he doesn't have KK, and call. Of course, he has AA, and of course, I catch a king for a massive suckout.


My overall question to the 1/2 players here is about the read. He told me later on after he cooled off and took a break that he did intentionally play up his weakness before he bet. I told him that I had used that read 10 or 15 times to steal pots during the week and had not once been wrong... until now. How reliable is this read, are there specific players that you will use it with more often(hooray for poker stereotypes, women on vacation and some older guys it seemed to be most common with)?

I think my biggest shock at 1/2 was the fact that people just had exactly what it looked/sounded like they had almost every time, and would say or do things that 100% gave away their hands before the action was done. Like I said, this is the only time I used that info and was wrong, curious to hear from the more experienced players.