Helping friends get better

[Art Vandelay]

I'm interested as to how others feel about helping out your home game friends when they come to you for advice. I have a group of ~20 people and we play at least twice a month (it's gotten more frequent lately) We play low buy in stuff, usually $20 tourneys. If not the best player in our group, I'm easily in the top 3 (I always overrate myself, but I personally think I'm the best player) and a few of the beginners have come to me asking for advice. They want to know what books they should read or they'll ask me for advice on how to play a hand. I'm kind of torn on this because I do like to see people improve when they are genuinely interested in doing so and as a friend I feel I should help out. But at the same time I'm likely to decrease my advantage over others.

The money we play for means little to me so that's definitely not an issue. I think ultimately this leads me to freely help people improve and I take a small amount of pride when I see someone get better. Could I also view this as a chance to improve my game, ie if everyone else raises their games perhaps mine will raise to stay ahead? Up until this point, I view these games purely as a social event, not as a chance to really improve my game.

I'm interested in what others have done in a similar situation; both people that play for small stakes and those which play for serious money. How far should you go to help someone improve?