In 2011, the ESPN-affiliated blog Grantland offered the MacArthur Grant-winning author Colson Whitehead a job covering that year's World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, Nevada.

[2][3] The Noble Hustle is written as narrative non-fiction, proceeding mostly linearly from Whitehead's acceptance of the Grantland job offer through his six-week training session and finally the tournament competition itself.

[4] The author takes numerous side roads during the narrative journey, adding his thoughts about his pending divorce and shared custody of a child, his first trip to Las Vegas with college friends (one of whom turns out to be film director Darren Aronofsky), historical information about the game of poker, and more.

[4][5] Whitehead describes the process of training for the tournament, including consulting with a coach and hiring a personal trainer, who helped him with the "Rocky-style conditioning" needed to remain seated for hours at a time.

[8] Similarly, Steven Barthelme wrote in The Washington Post that the book frequently succeeds in making something interesting out of reading about poker, but that its "lack of overall substance" caused it to be "disappointing".