Backing down on the turn?

You are holding the A of hearts, so he can't know he's got the nut flush with KQ of hearts. KQ heartts warrants a $2 pf raise. It also fits into calling your raise to $6. You have the option of bluffing the nut flush because of the Ah. JJ, or 99 are also likely. AJ is less likely because of the raise pf.
As soon as you stopped betting on the turn, he picked up the ball with a biggish bet on the river. I think he's got your AA beat here but pot odds of 4:;1 warrant a call. He needs trips , a straight, or a flush to beat you. You only have to be right one time in 5 to break even on this call.

I would bet the turn for information. With the check you have no idea what he has. Which gives him the opportunity to bluff you out on the river.
I would also have bet more post flop. Something like $13 - $16 or maybe even more. With two flush cards I always end it early. If he calls the bet then you have limited his range of hands down quite a bit.

My approach for hands like this, overpair/TPTK on completed flush board is to pot flop, 2/3ish turn here (fold to a repop), then check behind on the river. In my experience, people love slowplaying flushes like this and waiting until the river to checked cuts down on a river repop while still extracting value from hands you beat. If you get lead into on this approach... you are probably beat since you just displayed respectable strength on two streets. Depending on the bet size it might be smarter to simply fold, but it becomes mostly read dependent in that case.

I've never been a fan of checking the turn, completed draw or not, because it opens up the door to too much trying to take a shot at you at these limits and put you in an uncomfortable spot.

My retrospect on the situation is that I should have bet the turn, maybe 2/3 pot or so. If I check the turn, and he makes a big bet on the river, I'm in a tough spot. I think I always get too scared by flush draws hitting on the turn, and freeze up, because I fear the worst.

In this case, my fears might be warranted because of the preflop action and his c/c on flop. Basically, I'm wa/wb on the turn. The only hands he calls the flop with are JJ-AA, KhQh, AJ, 99, and 22. I'm actually behind most of these hands.

All I can say is, thank god he only bet 10 on the river. Made it an easy call. Could have raised, but I think I only get called by hands that beat me, except maybe KK or QQ.

Anywho, I called, he flipped over AJ and I dragged a nice pot.

[rachelwxm]

everything seems good. Call river or raise river both look good to me. If he is decent, he should fold AJ here to a raise. So you are not getting more value from AJ against good player but on the other hand, he might miss a check raise with his flush on the turn so he might has the flush. Betting small with flush is not unusual for him because he either put you on AK or wait for a 3-bet.