From your other posts, I have come to view you as a player who plays much of his range aggressively. I'm not sure if Villain in this hand views you in the same way or if you know how you're being viewed by Villain at the time of this hand, but perhaps that has a bit to do with why you were called here? If you are both without information, Villain is probably treating you as he would treat any other unknown who is check-raising him on this board: he's not folding top pair. Villain probably also assumes you bet turn after check-raising quite often and so his only 'real' decision is on the ace on the river.
Villain's call is quite reasonable, if not standard versus most, facing your action. It's certainly standard against a player who calls with all suited connectors pre-flop, check-raises all draws and maybe some air on this flop, and who check-raises KQ+ or maybe QJ+ for value, especially if you could have worse Qx hands like Q8s.
With such a small raise pre-flop, you closing multi-way action with great pot odds, and heavily discounting AQ, QQ-AA (since most players re-raise pre-flop often), you actually represent few hands for value relative to what appears to be your betting range. Many players also squeeze QJ and KQ some of the time in your pre-flop spot.
Just to note, your actual range could be different and Villain's call could be bad against that range. Maybe you only bluff with 5
6
and check-raise exactly QJ+ for value always in this type of situation. The problem
for this hand is that your bluff doesn't align with what seems to be Villain's assumptions and perhaps he even thought that the river ace would worry you about value betting hands like KQ and QJ, believing that middle pair hands would always fold if you bet.
I italicized "for this hand" because you still should be doing this with missed (semi-)bluffs to insure that you're being called by worse when you do value check-raise your QJ+ or whatever you're choosing to properly balance your value range with your bluffing range against a certain opponent. After showing a hand, perhaps Villain always assumes you bluff and perhaps it's the opposite. Both ranges will be in constant flux and each of you will (or should) always be trying to out adjust the other. The reason people responding in this thread or people playing against you shouldn't see this hand as a mistake is that it's only a snippet of a much larger and hopefully well-thought out game plan.
By adding and subtracting combinations from each side of this strategy depending on how you believe your opponent to be playing and adjusting, you're able to be both deceptive and show up with bluffs here and there to match your value hands if and when you deem it necessary. That said, there are cases when you should never be bluffing and always be value betting thinly. The more information you have, the better you'll be able to play.
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