Peeling is absolutely fine this early.
agree with this. think a lot of people auto 3bet ak andd this is bad. with loads of big blinds i'm going to need a good reason to 3b especially from the blinds and it seems you've given a more than adequate reason to NOT 3bet. appreciate that cash game players itt will think you are "disguising" or "slowplaying" but you're protecting your range and your actual hand.
hand #1 i like a check/jam on the turn as villain shouldn't really be able to fold Ax now and sometimes we get hero calls from KK and QQ. we shouldn't but sometimes we do in these $8 affairs lol. we give him a good opportunity to check back the river so as played i like shipping river.
hand #2 vwp imo. check now and let him barrel that ace. can't see that much merit in check/raising as he shouldn't have A7/4/2 and he's going to be bet/fold Ax and Kx hands that were betting the river for value so that leaves sets and bluffs, think it's a very easy check/call on the river.
are we bluffing? really think this is too thin, esp v a minraise pre. Cant imagine villain calling worse.
think our hand is slightly too strong to bluffcatch with. maybe villain will fold AQ/J/T but they will almost always check behind with these hands. i think if we check river we have to fold if we're not happy to vbet our hand on this runout. what range do you assign villain getting to this river with as played?