[Harv72b]

As always there are exceptions to any rule, but in general, I cbet the flop when:

1) I believe I have the best hand.
2) I'm up against only 1 opponent & don't get disconnected.
3) I'm up against 2 opponents & the flop wasn't absolutely hideous for my hand.
4) I'm up against 3-4 opponents and the board appears to have hit my raising range.
5) The flop improved my hand.

In this case, the flop did improve our hand a little bit--we picked up two backdoor draws. Additionally, with the ace flopping a bet can & often will get some better hands to fold (unimproved pocket pairs & many king high hands). The ace also obviously appears to have helped many hands in our raising range. And doubt that you're getting check/raised very often at all when you bet, while you probably are getting the option of taking a free card on the turn most of the time. Button's coldcall doesn't worry me too much as there are very few ace high hands that a typical opponent is coldcalling with in a 10/20 online game.

So I do kinda like this flop bet. You're unlikely to get check/raised (and if you do it's probably a set or aces up), and you have good folding equity against quite a few better hands. The flop is also devoid of likely draws, with the glaring exception of a diamond flush draw. If you do get raised or check/raised you can easily fold & still maintain your table image (after all, you could have JJ here right?).