Title	The Noble Hustle
Author	Colson Whitehead
Year	2014
Skill Level	any
Pros	Quick, enjoyable, easy read from a great writer.
Cons	Maybe too quick, despite the content being padded unchronologically by events from a year after the main narrative.
Rating	3.0

Note: unnumbered page 236 is "About the Author".

Colson Whitehead is one of a number of authors who have been fortunate enough to have his publisher pay him¹ to write about playing in the World Series of Main Event. But he's the only Pulitzer Prize winner² in the group, making The Noble Hustle³ a delightful read. Unfortunately, he isn't a very good poker player, regularly joining other writers only in very low-stakes dealer's choice home games and completely lacking in tournament experience.

More than a decade into the poker boom and a month after Black Friday has effectively killed internet poker in the U.S., Whitehead still lays out the basics of Texas Hold 'Em and explains how tournaments work, but at least he does so more entertainingly than anyone else has. A driver's license-less native of the Big Apple, he takes the bus to Atlantic City, accepts his complimentary chips and tangles with denizens of the $1/$2 Hold 'Em tables. This is a step up from his usual game but still far from where he's going.

Despite hiring a poker coach,⁴ he isn't able to learn fast enough to impress anyone with his skills or results. Fortunately, he is honest with us about this, deprecatingly describing his style as "Tight Incompetent".⁵ His two strongest features are his poker face, which he wears as a self-declared member of the Republic of Anhedonia,⁶ and his patience. These help him book a nice win at the $1/$2 Limit Hold 'Em table at the Tropicana and a decent cash in a $50 buyin tournament there.

But just six weeks later he's made the massive jumps to Las Vegas, the No-Limit Main Event, and a $10,000 buyin. Despite additional advice from Matt Matros, a writer-turned-successful-poker-player, Whitehead is far from ready. His Main Event story unfolds over the last fifty pages of the book. His demise is fully expected yet still disappointing to him, the now-defunct Grantland, and the reader, who is left wishing there was more for him to tell.