someone tell me if i played this hand right, because i may have done it wrong.
Guy to my immediate right has a few hundred dollars in front of him and he's a pretty loose aggressive player preflop. He raises to $20. i look down at my hand, and i have 9s9h. I call, there are two other callers.
Flop comes 6d7h8h. Initial raiser bets out $40. I call. Person to my left goes all-in for $52. Button calls, initial raiser calls, i call.
Turn comes a 10d. Initial raiser checks. i'm not sure what people are sitting on, but i put the button on a flush draw. he's the only guy i'm really worried about. I decide to bet $175. Button thinks for a long time, then calls. Initial raiser folds. I have $201 behind, button has me covered.
River comes out a black 5. I now have the second nuts, and i'm first to act. I think for a while - at first i was going to check because i was very vaguely scared of the 9J, but i just can't put him on that hand based on the way that he played it. It's possible that he has a 9 and is scared of *my* 9J, so the only way that i can avoid a chop and take the pot down is to shove and hope that he makes the incorrect play and folds his 9 if he has one. So i shove. He thinks for a very long time, trying to get a read on me, all of that. Based on how much he was thinking of it, i rethought his hand - if he had a missed flush draw, he wouldn't have been thinking about it so hard - now i think he has a set or a 9, and after he was thinking about it for longer, i don't put him on a 9 anymore. after a long time of thinking, he decides to call, and says, "if you have a 9, you're good."
so i took down a huge pot. The question is, should i have shoved instead on the turn?
a part of me is thinking 'yes' because let's suppose a H or D comes on the river. That's a scare card in two ways: it's scary for me if i put him on the flush draw and thinks he now made it, but it's also a scary card for *him* if he has a made hand already and that river now convinces him he should fold, so now i don't get the rest of his money into the pot. Granted, that would be fine if he also has a 9 and he folds what would have been a chop, but other scenarios don't play out like that.
i feel like in that hypothetical instance, checking with the intention of calling is the incorrect thing to do - i need to make the decision right then whether or not i'm going to commit my chips or not despite the scare card, and if i do, i'm going to shove. if not, i'm going to check fold. it's stupid to 'wait to see what he does' because it takes away my initiative.
i think i got lucky that the scare card didn't come on the river, and that's what makes me think that pushing on the turn would have been better overall. At the time i bet out $175 on the turn, there was $300ish in the pot. if instead i pushed for my $376, if he has a draw, he correctly folds (which is fine) or incorrectly calls (which is also fine). if he has a made hand, it puts more pressure on him to decide if his made hand is good (which could even include a 9).
thoughts?