Last night I was working on a new article on the value of sweating.  At the same time, I also had the pleasure to chat online with one of the hottest PLO players in the world right now. We were discussing my last blog concerning heroes and villains in poker. The thought that came to me during this process was how strong each of our personal poker prisms are.  Each person has one.  A poker prism is simply your perspective in the game.  It is formed by your education and experience in the game.  It influences all your decisions and strategy. Your poker prism is simply a smaller version of the prism that colors our lives.  Our goal should be to learn to escape from the prism of our lives.  The goal isn't to abandon our prism, but rather to gain perspective and some level of empathy and understanding of other prisms.

When you look through a quartz prism, you will see the world around you in a different light.  Your vision is diffracted as the rainbow of colors spreads before you.  Remove the prism and you can see clearly.  But if our is to understand someone else' perspective, it is not good enough to simply remove our prism but rather to learn to see through their prism.

Each of us has formed some understanding of how to play the game correctly.  Our natural tendency is to view anything that deviates from that understanding as inferior. That same poker prism affects how we look at other players.  Your hero may be my villain.  That doesn't change who the player truly is.  Your prism differs from mine.  What constitutes a villain may differ between us.  Your sources of information and history may differ from mine.

Top poker players have learned that in order to outplay their opponent, they often need to get into their head (i.e. understand their prism).  It is not enough to play a strong strategy. They must understand how their opponents view the game so they can exploit that unique prism. This is where the value of sweating comes in.  When we are playing, our attention is on our cards and the hands we are playing.  We are involved in the moment and our decisions and results.  When you are sweating other players, none of that matters.  You can abandon your own prism and begin to understand another players prism.

Some questions you might ask yourself as you sweat another player:

• Why, when, how often and by how much do they bet or raise?

• How do they react to their opponents aggression?

• How do they react when they suffer a bad beat?

• What are their motivations? To win money? To win the most pots? To create action? To beat you? To practice and improve their game?

There are many questions you can ask and try to answer as you sweat a player.  Each answer helps you piece together the rainbow of colors that your potential opponents casts from their unique prism.  Once you understand their prism, or poker perspective, you can look to take advantage of the added knowledge when you play them.  Stepping out of our own prism gives us a truer perspective.  We can begin to see our blind spots and distortions. Stepping into someone else' prism gives us insight that can help us to understand their motivations in a way that looking at it from your personal prism can't.