Several small ones

I spent a lot of the day yesterday playing small stakes short-handed games. First, I played two heads-up games against Dale for $5 each, and won both. Then, Daniel came by and the three of us played a $3 game until he had to go to work. I ended up busting out of that one, and they split my dollar-fifty. Fortunately, however, this wasn't the end of the action yesterday.
Dale wanted to go heads-up again, and I wanted to raise the stakes. I told him I was willing to go as high as he was, but he received some (sound) advice not to play for all the money to his name against someone who just beat him twice. We settled on $10, and I won that, too.
Then, we played a fifth game, this time with Dale, Lee, and me. We started for $10 each with .05-.10 blinds (though in all four previous games these were higher). I lost a big pot against Dale when I semibluff-raised the turn with a broadway and nut-flush draw, but was called by his pocket kings and my hand didn't improve. I had him covered, though, and was still above my buy-in when the hand was over. I managed to make a couple of well-timed bluffs against both opponents, and ended up $13 above my ten at the end. Overall, a pretty good evening/afternoon of poker.
Speaking of well-timed bluffs, I wanted to mention that a lot of the times I pushed Lee out of the hand, he was on the short stack ($3.50-$4.50 or so). I don't normally like to just push someone all-in when they're on the short stack, especially when they have a 40 BB stack, and this wasn't the way the hands went down, either. But I noticed that Lee was doing something that I consider a pretty fatal error in that he was flat-calling way too much preflop when he should have raised all-in or folded. A lot of players do this, in fact, but limping or calling a preflop raise and then letting your hand go can leave you so short that you have to double up an extra time or two just to stay in contention. In tournaments, this can kill your chances completely. In cash play, if you have extra money in your pocket, why even play short stacked? but if you don't have the money to reload, you have to use the short stack as a weapon, and apply maximum pressure in pots. I was given way too many opportunities to put Lee all-in on the flop when the pot represented like a third of his chips.
This, I suppose, is why pot-commitment is so crucial to cash play. With a stack of $4, if you call a ¢50 raise before the flop, there's going to be $1 (plus blinds) in there on the flop, and you'll only have $3.50 in your stack. If the flop completely misses you, though, what do you do? you've invested an eighth of your stack already. I way prefer an all-in raise preflop, or at least don't fold the flop. When you're short on chips, you really need that fold equity, and you can't get it unless you raise.
Don't get me wrong here - I think that of the Monday night crowd, Lee is definitely one of the best players there, and I admire that his game is more loose/aggressive than mine, and that he's a little more willing to stick it out there than me, but still knows what he's doing. But everyone makes a play even they don't like now and then, and of course this is only my side of the story, since I didn't know what his cards were in those spots.
Also, what about trying to get Dale to gamble higher? I mean, was it ethical? I knew he had scored a major win in the Friday Night Game the day before, and I also knew that he would eventually be putting some of that money back into the poker economy in future games. I knew I could beat him, but I wondered how the pressure would affect either of us at a certain level. Also, if I knew I could beat him, would it be wrong to play him for whatever he had?
I mean, I know it sounds predatory, but I think that poker players love to hear about their opponents' financial lives improving, because it means they'll be able to give a lot more action. I wouldn't wish financial ruin on anyone at all, but let me say this: I am no professional, and I don't claim to be anywhere near unbeatable, but since I keep track of how much I win or lose in the long run, I know I rate to win against many of the people I play against right now, and once they are playing, I don't care what is going on in their personal lives. All I want to do is take as much from them as I possibly can, and I do that by trying to make as few mistakes as possible. Should I feel bad if I take someone for a lot? There's a case for it, and maybe I should, but do I ever feel bad about it? No. Never. Not even a little bit.
In my view, the cardinal rule of poker is "Don't gamble if you can't afford to lose it." All of the emotional/moral/financial decision making about what one does with their own money is the players' own concern, not their mutual concern. All of that stuff should be settled or figured out before you sit down. Why should the winner feel guilty about winning? Where is the fun in that?