Throwing Money Away - Intentionally Losing

[memphis_aces]

I've got a scenario I seem to run into a good bit lately and I wanted to see how others felt.

I host homegames on a semi-weekly basis. I really enjoy hosting a game as I love the home-field advantage that seems to exist. I've got a very nice set of chips... nice KEM Cards...an above average table (soon to be very nice), and a nice house so people tend to enjoy playing at my place as well. This is all fine and good but I play with a lot of average to below average players which tends to make things lopsided.

In the last 3 weeks I've hosted about 6 tournaments...I won 3 and finished 2nd in one other. In addition we had a late night 5-handed NL Ring game where I ended up tripling up. It would have been a LOT more but I lost a $50 pot to a runner-runner draw and I started dumping a lot of chips later in the game to keep the other people interested.

Another time, after winning the first two tourneys I ended up going out very early on a call that I never would have made had I been playing to seriously win.

I've found that I've started to play less than optimally at times (or just plain dump cash) in an effort to keep my guests a little more comfortable in order to keep people coming back. I don't really play for the cash, moreso for the game itself. I was just wondering if other players have "stepped down" their game in order to keep the game going (or to keep the people coming back).

Thoughts?

NOTE: This is NOT a bragging thread.... I am not saying I'm the best player ... just saying that I'm the best in this group

EDIT: note that these are not higih-stakes games... just little 20-40 buy in games.... the cash means less to me than at least half of the people in the game....