[LetsRock]

I play in a monthly friendly game with some friends. It's been going on for years. All but a couple of these guys are absolute fish. I have respect for one guy's play who doesn't play a lot. Another is a used to be biggest fish in the pond who's trying to get a little more serious about it (reading books etc) but despite all advice and all books he makes more bad decisions than good.

The stakes are low (really bad night = losing $60) and won't hurt anyone in the least. We play dealer's choice with more garbage games than not some of them being made up on the spot ("7-card-no-peeky-chase-the-queen" comes to mind!) and is in general just a fun romp with the boys kind of night.

As a general rule, I win at least some most of the time. Due the nature of the games, anyone can win at least a little on any given night - everybody gets a chance to be the winner occasionally and there is no select group of players who consistently gets hammered all the time.

They all know that I play poker "more then recreationally" and I would guess that they all (those that even consider it that deeply) consider me to be solid player. They know I read books and since this is a friendly game, I will offer any advice they want to hear, even if this is considered to be "bad form" if you want to be a winning poker player. This is for fun. Frankly I'd rather they all got to be good players so that the games would be more challenging.

But, I never intentionally ease up or "play poorly" in this or any game. It just goes against my nature. If I have the nuts in a game, regardless of rediculous the game is, they pay in any way I can make them (c/r, slow play, ram and jam whatever).

I will "give away" edges like "I saw your cards", or "you're flashing the bottom card on the deck" type of stuff that I wouldn't in a more sophisticated game. But I always play my A game.

And I think, at least at some level, most of the guys enjoy the challenge of taking on the "big guy" in their circle.

As an example, a couple of weeks ago we had an impromptu game with only 4 players and we decided to play some mini-tourney style games. Winner take all NLTHE. After 3 mini-tourneys I'd not managed a victory (thanks to some-off-the- wall bad beats and one very bad move on my part), but they were all tickled that they'd each won and I hadn't. I won the fourth so we all broke even. Oddly enough I was the only one who could appreciate that is was basically a perfect night of friendly poker. We all got a lot of action, we all got the taste of defeat, we all had a few beers and some laughs and we all broke even! Isn't that ultimately the goal of friendly games?