What is the best way of playing this, particularly interested in how the 4th club should influence things. Thanks in advance.

You played it fine until the river. You have to call the river, but raising is usually going to be bad. Not because you are never ahead, but because you are rarely ahead of a hand that will call.

He has called a pot-sized bet on the turn with 3 clubs out there. Usually this is either because he has a decent hand already, or is drawing to the nuts. When the 4th club comes and he leads out almost pot he pretty much has either the nuts or nothing. There is a slim chance he has the J clubs, but will he call your raise with that? Some will - and that is why it might not be terrible to shove, since the amount left is not that much. But most of the time he'll either fold, or call with the K. If the stacks were a lot deeper, raising is really dangerous, because it opens things up for him to reraise and give you a much tougher decision.

The 4th club influences things dramatically. From his standpoint, it means you need only 1 club to have a flush (in the event he has a different type of hand). It also means that he only needs to have 1 club, in the event you have a different type of hand, and he can fire a bluff that would be hard to call without a club. That's why it is very tough to fold the Q there.

From your standpoint, your almost certain winner has turned into a bluff catcher. There really isn't much you can do about it except for not raising into the nuts.

Many thanks VBAces

I don't see much of a reason to bet the flop, since you're hardly ever folding out hands with more equity than yours, and villains will rarely suck out on the turn if they are currently behind. i.e. you have a mid-strength hand that doesn't need "protecting".

As played, call the river, expecting to lose more often than not. Raising is bad because villain won't ever call with worse.

Im actually folding this preflop. Granted ive been tightening up recently and its been working wonders for my game. Not much of a reason to bet the flop since any ace and better queens are calling and you havent hit your flush yet.

Just call river. No need to get fancy. Hes either leading out with a bluff (which you beat) or the nut flush.

I'm okay with opening this pre and I'm okay with the C-bet, and definitely okay with continuing on the turn once you make the flush. However, river should just be a call.

hhmmm - lots of interesting points.

@Killme37 - agreed, not the strongest hand to be playing, and generally fold a lot of these kind of hands.

got the point that the river should just be a call - which saved me some money last night in a very similar hand where i had second best to nuts again

I don't fully understand Arty's point - my understaning had been on flush draws that i should be putting money in the pot - have i got this wrong? Is it simply a case that the only reason for doing this is for the fold equity, and in this situation there isn't any?

Yea no one wants to hit a flush and have no money in the pot but fold equity is definitely a part of it. If you have fold equity then you are winning the pot without even having to draw. Also by betting this much you are charging yourself too much to draw to a flush. If you bet 1/3 pot to get the right price but it you would probably get raised off your draw and its pretty obvious to everyone that you would be setting your own price.

For value? You've got more than a flush draw here. You've got 2ndPGK and a R-R SD as well. For meta-game: you would have c-bet it with a stronger non-flushdraw hand?

I agree you don't need to bet to protect your hand.

+1

If your hand has no showdown value, then betting with a draw makes sense, because you don't want to go to showdown, and can't get value from worse hands. e.g. if you had 7 6, then you pretty much never have the best hand on the flop, and you'd quite like to win the pot without having to make a flush. You'd love it if hands that are beating you - like 88 or J9 - would fold right now, because winning with 7 high is a nice result.
When you have 2nd pair, (Qx on this board), you're beating hands like 88 and J9, so you don't want them to fold. You'd like to get value from them, and that usually requires a small piece of deception. If you check the flop, then someone holding 88 or J9 might think he has the best hand. You can also induce bluffs from total airballs like 65hh; a hand that would snap-fold if you bet the flop.
When you bet with Qx, you isolate yourself against a range that is usually beating you, since you fold out the worse hands that could potentially give you value.
In short, it's not that there's "no fold equity" on this flop (because there's quite a lot, actually). It's that most of the hands that fold are the ones you'd like to stick around!
Since a lot of the range that continues versus a bet is Ax - meaning you need to make a flush or two pairs+ to win - taking a free card where possible actually benefits you, and allows you to get one street closer to showdown with a mid-strength hand.
Another reason to allow a card to come off is that some of the cards that villains might need to improve them to a better hand will actually give you an even stronger one. (e.g. 8h8d only has 2 outs to a set, but one of those gives you a flush. When a villain only has one or two outs, it's fine to let him have a free card.)

I tend to think of "value hands" as those that can bet for three streets. Typically that means two pairs or better.
I don't have many really big hands in my range on this board. With sets, I'd usually check(-raise), although c-betting is fine too. Q9s is just about in my range, and AQ is there, obviously, so I'm c-betting those, but those make up very few combos, so I can't bet too many draws. With all the Ax hands, I'm check-calling nearly always. OOP in a multiway pot, it's usually a mistake to start cramming in money with one pair, so I'm pot-controlling/bluff-catching all the way with stuff like AJ.