Background: Table is an extremely loose $1-3 game. I have gotten multiple callers for pre flop raises as high as $23 and a three bet to $45 was called by KJo (I had AK and lost that pot). The button on the hand I am about to play has been punishing limpers by raising large pre, getting callers and picking up pots on the flop with C-bets. I haven't been involved in most of these pots because I rarely limp. The only player that has three bet since I sat down is me.

Relevant players to the hand: UTG+1 ($550) is one of the tighter players in the game, but this table is really loose. Haven't seen him get out of line yet, but he did end up at showdown with random suited cards (think J6ss) that he limp called pre. SB ($375) age 20's very loose young guy. I cover both players.

I am UTG and dealt 44. I make an exploitive raise size to $13 planning to play my hand for set value only. It goes exactly as planned and we take the flop 5 ways.

Flop ($65): K74 After getting checked to me I bet $35. UTG+1 calls and after folded to SB he check raises to $105. I take a little bit of time and flat. UTG+1 surprises me and also calls. I am a little worried that one of them may have 77, but for the most part I think I am up against a K and a flush draw.

Turn ($380) My fears of 77 being out there are lessened when the 7 is the turn card. I now have bottom full house on a paired, two flush draw board. SB surprises me by checking.

I am not sure if this signifies that he was taking a shot and is now giving up or what the deal is. I elect to check with the knowledge that I am risking a K or 7 coming in the hopes that a flush completing card hits. If river bricks if checked to again I will bet just over the sb's effective stack since it is less than a pot sized bet. Barring a K or 7 hitting, I am obviously calling all bets.

I know big hand big pot, but decided to play a check here. Is this bad? If betting the turn, how much are you betting? Small around $125 or are you going bigger (over $200)?

I posted this because my answer would be to usually bet around 1/3 pot here and get it all in on the river. Looking for feedback.

Sb has KJ, UTG1 has nut flush draw. You probably aren't going to get the KJ to call a turn bet that isn't giving UTG+1 a good price to call. So bet the turn enough so that the draw doesn't have the price to call. Like $265.

at this table, with these dynamics, I am fine making a 3b on the flop. maybe the SB folds a decent K, but if so he may be folding it on the turn when you flat his c/r. at this table, he's not folding his draws or 2p hands so just get it in. he may even call you with 1 pair putting you on a draw. you described him as very loose at a very loose table. let him call.

on the turn, SB has $250 and the pot is $380. I really don't think it matters what you do here. I probably favor a small bet like $100 to make it hard for him to fold anything he c/r on the flop and then to make the river bet hard for him to fold. nothing wrong with just putting him all in or checking it back either.

the calculus is whether he is more likely to call his money off or bluff it on the river. you described him as very loose which makes me lean toward him calling and thus why I favor taking more of a bet-heavy line.

Why would we want to not give the draw a good price? We have the full house, we want the draw to call our turn bet.

OP, bet the turn small, like 1/4-1/3 pot.

Oops you're totally right I'd bet $115.

Checking is fine, I think you'll want to do that with AK, KQ, KJ, flush draw, 65 type hands a lot that didn't want to fold flop. If the players are totally clueless then I like a small bet for value. If they have any common poker sense then I prefer a check to continue repping most of your range that wants to either realize equity with a draw or get to showdown with top pair.

We raised 44 UTG, in a really loose game where someone could have 3-bet us even though they "don't seem the type" because we wanted to flop a set.

Not just any set, but a set that is 95% of the time going to be bottom set. (estimate only, YMMV)

And then we flop bottom set and bet some more. We got what we want.

And then the board pairs, but oddly we now have a bottom boat, golly gee, we got what we wanted again (one out to quads, not likely, basically we got what we want.)

Now we seem to not like the situation, since the literal question is "is checking a full house in a really loose game a bad idea"? As if giving a free card to all these guys we are suddenly worrying about is a better idea?

Maybe it's just me, but raising pocket pairs under the gun, flopping a set and turning a boat, is about as good as it gets. Blame the guy in the mirror if you don't like it now, and stop raising UTG with 44. And if 55 isn't a good enough boat-maker, stop with 55. Or 66. Repeat as necessary and have the discipline to raise (or even limp or cold call for that matter) only with pocket pairs that might make a boat that you won't have to ask this question about.

For me it's either 66 or 77 depending on the game and on stack sizes, but that decision is yours, and it is a pre-sit-down decision.

Agree with Nozsr, you have the virtual nuts and are now worried for some reason. All you should be doing is trying to get UTG +1 stack in. Bet small turn, hope the flush hits and felt him, fist pumping the whole way through.

People thinking OP is ‘scared’ on the turn or worried are clearly misreading.

I think when in this spot the decision is how often do we want to check here because we basically have the hand locked up and we are hoping someone makes the second-best hand.

If an off suit Q had come, we could clearly bet - and SB might have even led.

I’d bet 110 assume villain will call all pieces for such miniature size and probably rip 7

Would bet small on non flush rivers to get crying call from kx and induce potential bluff spas from missed hearts.

When flush comes in depends on multiway action players tendencies.

Even the title says slow play a big hand. Not sure what gave the impression I am scared.

Then why are you asking if a check is bad here? If you're not scared for some reason then you should know it's bad. By checking the turn here you leave value on the table by not having the opportunity to get UTG+1 stack in by river.

I understand our preflop thinking. The only drawback might be that at certain tables if someone is willing to get in big stacks versus us postflop that we sometimes set ourselves up for the bad end of a cooler situation with a PP this low.

The SPR is 8ish versus the bigger stack, which means we can play for stacks with 3 3/4 PSB bets, although it will of course be easier to play for stacks with a smaller river bet (especially since it will be rather large in terms of $$$). And the flop is drawy (no one folds a draw on the flop). And thanks to preflop we can now really put some serious money in on the flop (where it's unlikely TP will fold to just the first bet although they may fold to future bets). I see no reason not to hammer the flop, so I PSB it. I think we're losing pretty big value here by not doing so (both immediately and making it more difficult to play for stacks later), unless we're undersizing our bet in order to induce a spazz (which likely isn't the case at a non-3betty table).

Facing the flop check/raise from the tight guy is one of the reasons I'm not completely in love with preflop. I mean, what's he doing, check/raising AK that he didn't 3bet preflop against a preflop raiser who continued into the world? But thanks to preflop we've built an SPR that we should likely never fold a set to unless the board runs out horrible. We've made our bed.

Our overall goal should likely still be to play for stacks. In order to do so against the biggest stack, a bet really needs to go in on the turn, otherwise we are left with $430 for the river into $380 (if the guy behind us doesn't bet) which is too large both in terms of relative to the pot as well as $$$ at a typical 1/3 NL game. So I would make a sucker bet of like $100 which TP and flush draws will have a very difficult time folding to.

Basically, we raised preflop for the sole reason of being able to play for stacks when we bink, and now we're not doing that.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I post hands that I think are interesting or I want to flush out what the community thinks of my actions. My default here is to normally bet around $125 to set up a river shove against the bigger stack. I checked in this case because I wasn’t really thinking about UTG1 and was more in line with thinking the check raiser was FOS and would fold to a turn bet. But may bluff the river after my turn weakness or after hitting a flush (if he has a flush draw).

Results: UTG1 overbet jammed the turn and I snapped it off. He was drawing dead with the Q high flush draw. It has been a long time since someone got it in vs. me for well over 100 bb’s drawing dead. I was thinking some of this is because I am usually aggressive and have the betting lead and villains are much less likely to bluff raise than to just bet as a bluff when we show weakness.

This is another reason why I posted the hand, I wanted to see thoughts on a turn check first. I think betting is probably better in this case, but checking to induce may have merit?

It worked out well this time, but in the end I think expecting someone who hasn't gotten out-of-line yet to lose his head against not one but two players (one of whom check/raised the flop 3way leaving just a 2/3 PSB left and the initial raiser calling that check/raise) is expecting too much.

GimoG

If we want a balanced strategy we should be checking here with most of our range. All our top pair hands and all of our flush draws want to play for pot control at this low SPR on the turn. If you want to bet your nuttish hands, that's fine, but technically it's exploitable (in the sense that any player with half a brain will understand how strong our line looks). With this in mind, I'm fine with checking back this turn with our entire range. This is the most balanced play.

Checking the turn is always a very balanced strategy. If you care to have a balanced strategy then checking the turn will do it for sure but at the same time will cut the pot size. We can't have it both ways. Build the pot up with what looks almost the nut hand and having a balanced strat.

Why you care about being balanced. Who cares about balanced?
Are you playing with the same players all the time or playing in some casino where new players can be seen all the time? - So, why be balanced?

If you're concerned about having a balanced strategy (I wouldn't be overly concerned about it, although fair enough if you want to take it into consideration), you can still bet a lol 1/4 PSB with a lot of other hands here that aren't nuttish, no?

GcluelessNLnoobG

How is $13 an exploitative raise size? I prefer betting turn for value most of the time here.

In this game it was exploitive because I had been raising much larger with big hands and was making (for this particular game) a smaller raise size. $13 is my standard open at a normal $1-3 game, but this was not a normal game....Very Loose and if villains were paying attention, they can pick up that I was raising smaller with a speculative hand and larger with big hands. So I was using the term exploitive to mean I was telegraphing the strength of my hand but I didn't think anyone would pick up on it or act on it (ie 3-bet me light).

Agree with everything you say and also agree that betting small on the turn is best, but man did it feel good to have someone punt >100bb's when I made this non-standard play. And I can't say that the bias this hand caused me here won't cause me to do it again with a nuttish turn had to see if a punt can happen again. I probably should have led the post off with results and tried to get perspective on if people see overbet jams with draws thinking they have fold equity. It will take just one hand where I don't bet and it gets checked through and then no $ on the river for me to not check the turn in a similar situation.

That’s human nature but you know it’s all dependent on our table and our opponents. In some instances you should check if you expect a bet behind you and in others you have to bet your own hand.