Not sure if this topic has been discussed before or not, apologies if so.
Just curious as to how you (if at all) adjust your strategy when playing cash games against friends/colleagues/acquaintances.
Personally, I have a difficult time allowing myself to play optimally in these situations. My usual game is quite aggressive and very exploitive against unsophisticated opponents (which my home games are full of). So I find myself abandoning what I know would be an optimal strategy in favour of playing "nicer". More flat calls, limps, etc. to be in line with the norm for the game so that everyone has more fun and it's more of a social gathering than a hardcore poker session.
Curious if anyone else finds themselves in this situation and how they deal with it.
My regular game is spread limit, non-standard games. Very little mercy, just a last bet not made vs host.
A sometimes game that is shallow low stakes has a mix of abilities. When I play, I remember you can only skin a cat once, but shear the sheep and they will return.
If you keep the home games stakes low enough and cap initial buy ins and reloads also low enough , THEN you should be able to play any style and intensity you want to or can , without risking discouraging any donators. Folks can deal with small weekly or more losses and keep coming back. They consider small losses just the costs of their poker hobby and find losing to you mildly annoying , but not discouraging! Actually many\or most of them will just consider you a lucky player each session and not respect your higher skill levels.
Maybe you are a lucky player too! At least lucky to be a slightly better level poker player mixed in among a group of donators!
If people losing is enough to make them quit playing, your stakes are too high. I run two games with some player overlap; one is a .10/.20 and the other is .50/$1. I play just as hard against the .10/.20 players as the "big" table and they keep playing because losing $20-$40 is not a big deal.
Depends if you are friendly or friends with people, and what stakes we're talking about.
My home games (which I host) is .25/.50 with max $100 BI, are mostly friends, not just poker-friends. So I play soft like you say, and I use it as an excuse to limp along with 75o and other home game junk. Everyone knows I will blast off with 72o, but I keep the 3betting with A5s to a minimum, save that for online. But everyone in the game knows I have a 5-figure poker bankroll. So whatever I win or lose in the home game is to me close to meaningless. I mostly want to laugh and goof off.
But when I go to another guy's home game, with stakes and buy-ins one notch higher and I'm merely poker-friendly with the players, I ramp it up to close to normal casino exploitativeness.
