The Noble Hustle

Whitehead, Colson. The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death. New York: Doubleday. 2014. Print

First Sentences:

I have a good poker face because I am half dead inside.

My particular combo of slack features, negligible affect, and soulless gaze has helped my game ever since I started playing twenty years ago when I was ignorant of pot odds and M-theory and four-betting, and it gave me a boost as I collected my trove of lore, game by game, hand by hand. 

It has not helped me human relationships-wise over the years, but surely I'm not alone here.

Description:

Maybe people who play poker casually or even somewhat seriously share a common thought: "How well would I do in the World Series of Poker? I know the rules of the game and can beat my friends. There's a lot of money involved. I'm probably as good as those other players, so why not?" 

Well, Colson Whitehead in his new book, The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death, gets the opportunity to try his amateur poker skills with the big boys when he is commissioned to write an insider article about the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas. Even better, the magazine stakes the entry fee and betting money, and agrees he can keep all his winnings. Now all he has to do is do a bit of research on the nuances of playing big stakes poker, brush up on his skills, and show up in Las Vegas. Sounds easy, huh?

And so his journey begins, reading the core books of strategy, practicing at tables in Atlantic City, entering (and losing) small tournaments, getting tips from a current WSOP player, and perfecting his poker face. All this is part of the daunting preparation to play "Hold'em 'the Cadillac of poker,' and I was only qualified to steer a Segway." His confidence is not high:

A middle-aged man, already bowing and half broken under his psychic burdens, decides to take on the stress of being one of the most unqualified players in the history of the Big Game. A hapless loser goes on a journey, a strange man comes to gamble.

Along the way he explains the rules and terminology of Hold'em -- the Small and Big Blinds, the Flop, the Turn, and the River, No Limit, All In -- until we readers grasp the basics of this seemingly simple game. More complexities and strategies emerge as the stakes and competition get better. Interestingly, Whitehead begins to recognize commonalities among his fellow players:

• Big Mitch is a potbellied endomorph in fabric-softened khaki shorts and polo shirt....
• Methy Mike, a harrowed man who had been tested in untold skirmishes, of which the poker table was only one....
• Robotron, lean and wiry and hunkered down, a young man with sun-glasses and earbuds, his hoodie cinched tight around his face like a school shooter or a bathroom loiterer...only here tonight because the Feds shut down all the U.S. online poker sites....
• The Lady with the Crimson hair, a quiet sixty-something lady with bright red hair, the follicles of which it was perhaps possible to count.....

Training involved trips to Atlantic City where gambling was available on a variety of levels. Having a daughter that he shares with his recently-divorced wife adds new challenges:

I'd drop off the kid at school, hop on the subway to the Port Authority, and catch a bus to AC. Then I'd gamble, gamble, gamble, catch a midnight bus back to the city, sleep all day, and pick up the kid from school the next afternoon. I'd make dinner, put her to bed, read Harrington, take her to school, and start over again.

He has his own insights he gladly shares:

• Hollywooding: Using all your years of deceiving others to put on a show at the table. Ever said, "Cute baby," about some newborn who'd found a portal between their Hell Dimension and our world? You may have a career in poker.

• Poker Gods: Those entities who watch over your poker existence, engineering deep cashes, bad bets, poor position, crappy planers to fleece. An eccentric pantheon, to be sure.

• Andedonia: The inability to experience pleasure (the philosophy of Whitehead as written on his shirt during the WSOP).

When training is done and the WSOP begins, Whitehead enters an entirely new world. ESPN is there to cover celebrities who play like Jason Alexander and Brad Gilbert as well as the professional competitors. Over 6,800 players are there with the champion taking home $8.7 million. Whitehead is definitely in over his head, but tries to put his newly-learned techniques and poker face into action and hope to make it past the first round.

No spoilers here. You will have to read The Noble Hustle to find out how he does in the spotlight. But it's the process, the learning, the observations, the language and the people that make this book keep you reading, not his outcome (although that is interesting, too!). I love Whitehead's snarky writing style, kind of a Raymond Chandler darkness with a touch of Bill Bryson self-deprecation and oddities of real life. It's a world I know nothing about, but Whitehead lets me observe and learn the good and the goofy sides of it on every page.

Who knows? Maybe I'll test my skills there someday. Yeah, right. I now know what that would be like. Still ....

Happy reading. 

Fred

www.firstsentencereader.blogspot.com

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

O'Nan, Stewart. The Odds

A couple journeys to Niagara Falls to gamble their life savings. The outcome will decide whether their marriage will continue or be abandoned, a decision made on the very last page of this book with one spin of the wheel. Very highly recommended. (previously reviewed here)