Hi, interesting! The play the villain does is the same play I did post in another thread here. And you kind of response to my question with this thread and how you can react.

I’m in no way a pro or anything, and sometimes my thoughts are very strange, sometimes bad, and sometimes out of the box I would say. With your hand on that kind of flop, there is a possibility to check for information… I will try to explain.

Ok Step 1 in my thinking.
He flat pre. He can have about anything, I mostly put him on suited connectors, broadways, some small pocket pairs. As you got an A, he is less likely to have an A, if he got an A he can have 2 pair pretty easy here. And you are beat already, but you do have a backdoor for the straight. He expects a cbet 100% of the time on this kind of board. He raise your bet for information. He can simply have a K, (none heart), maybe a T, (can be a heart for the flushdraw too) or pure air. If he is playing with confidence and recently won pots he can think to himself. “Ok, he cbet, I expect that. Let’s see if he got an A and check raise.”

Now, Step 2 in my thinking.
You say it’s not your favorite board. But you still flopped decent, still if you think it’s not your favorite board the villain must think the same unless he really smashed it with QJhh for example (also less likely as you have the Q blocker). Now it gets a bit tricky. I think most player would check QJhh or flopped trips on this board (still this is possible hands but less common). To keep your full range in. But they would also check air and none made hands. And probably smaller pocket pairs gets a check too.

Your move? Now it gets cheaper to call if he wants to donklead, to see the turn card. As he probably bets smaller than your cbet + his check raise.

This way you can get more information for a cheaper price. You get to see the turn and can evaluate depending on his next move.

Here on the turn you have 2 options depending on what he does.
1. He checks. Do you wanna lead on the turn? What does this achieve? You fold out all his bluffs. And when beat we loose chips. We still can bet and protect our hand from draws.
2. We can check behind and for the same reason as on the flop. He can either take a free card, bluff river, or think his worse 1 pair hands is good and want to get cheap to river.

If he check, I think this indicate that he got some kind of showdown value, but is uncertain of the strength of his hand and is glad to just check it down.

If he bets. And depending on size. Time to figure out if he does this as we shown weakness or if he got a monster and try to start build the pot. We can still call if he bet as we got decent showdown. The option is also to fold if you really feel he got you beat.

This brings us to the river. Depending on river card and how the turn and river connects with both the board and his pre flop flat range you need to put it all together. If he checks, I’m happy to check it behind for pot control. No reason to not just check behind and see his cards, to get the opportunity to put notes on him.

If he leads, you really gotta ask yourself if AQo, 1 pair is good enough?

I’m not sure if you got any wiser. But this is how I think about the hand. I’m in no way a pro player. But it would be nice if someone can comment on my thinking and see if it’s totaly wrong and open me up for seeing things in a different ways.