A situation I've been finding tricky

[luckystraights]

I've been finding the following situation a little tricky and could do with some pointers to stir me in the right direction please.

Consider yourself in a pot with one opponent, you have top pair, but your kicker isn't the best, for example KT, and there is a flush draw out there.

What I've been mostly doing is betting out to scare of the flush draw, but can sometimes run into kicker trouble if my opponent isn't on the flush draw.

I ran into the this trouble earlier with AT, if I'm in the flop with AT I'll ussually play it safe in case my opponet has an higher ace, but I didn't want to give him or her great odds or free cards to draw at a flush either, how do you handle it ?

http://www.pokerhand.org/?1765496

[Pops28]

Okay, called with position and caught an ace. I have no problem with the bet of 450 when it is checked to you but when wdf1542 cold calls your bet after checking you need to be very suspicious. wdf1542 called from UTG so you have to give him credit for having a hand at this point. Think about what he might call with when UTG at a full table (assuming not a real loose player).
I doubt he is on the flush draw after the initial check-call when he initially called UTG and if he is it is probably with A-Q, A-J, possibly (but doubtfull) A-10. Generally if a player is going to speculate from UTG with A-10 they are not going to check to try and trap you unless they have a big stack (which wdf1542 doesn't). The other hands he may have at this point are 9-9, k-k, and A-A.
I say at this point save your $800 and check it down if possible.

[NotFadeAway]

You might could have folded preflop, but postflop looks pretty standard.  You have to bet when it's checked to you, although you might want to check the turn.  However, if you check the turn your river decision is going to be difficult, so betting is certainly not a mistake.  Hands like A-10 are complete trap hands, so folding them is probably best, but if you can limp on the button it can't be that bad to see the flop (even if it's still leads to problems.)  Overall this hand doesn't look too bad at all.

[luckystraights]

I normally would have folded it, but I had a relatively big stack, and had sat for awhile and didn't want to create a rock image whilst I just sat there.

I totally agree about it being a pain in the neck.