Your analysis is correct – there’s not too much fear worrying about a flush. Only combos would make sense would be the 8cXc that paired the flop and continued, or some other backdoor flush draw holding that would have reason to call the flop – something specifically like 7c9c.

I wouldn’t worry about villain having a straight on the river, either, as you would’ve heard about that on either the flop or turn.

Therefore, your main focus is value. I agree with “theginger45” that if you make your flop and/or turn bets slightly bigger, that’ll create a more favourable stack-to-pot ratio for you on the river with hopes of going for a shove (ie. of 1/2 pot to 3/4 pot instead of something closer to a pot sized bet).

Think of the hands that villain is likely to call 3 streets with – an turned pair of aces (ie. floats the flop or calls with a straight draw – A9 / AJ), or two pair. These are holdings that you beat and will likely call a sizeable value bet. Everything else though (pair of Tens, the case Q) are likely to fold to any further river aggression. Therefore, it’s okay to continue betting and to bet reasonably big.

The only time you could go for a smaller river bet here (like 1/4 pot) would be if you thought villain usually would have TX or QX here (thin value) or if he had a busted straight draw and you thought he’d be capable of turning a missed draw into a bluff and shoving the river himself. However, because he could easily hold an Ace and call a bigger bet on the river, I think the way the hand was played was fine.

Just for flop/turn next time, don’t feel obligated to click the 1/2 pot button and then bet it – it’s okay to use that as a baseline and then vary it up or down just to give some dynamics (ie. pot control – smaller bets) to your betting, that in this case, could set up a better sized river shove if you had bet the flop / turn bigger.