Hustling the Mark

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Weakness is a sign of strength.
—An old poker adage.

A common con game in fiction, particularly in comedy. It works like this: Someone challenges a person to a "friendly game" of something, be it cards, some kind of sport or something else. At first, they seem to be bad at the game and will repeatedly lose to the other person. Then they will suggest a wager. The minute the wager is made, they suddenly become good at the game and beat the other person hands down. A longer, and more expensive version, is to lose a series of small bets and then apparently attempt to bluff the mark into going away with a very large, dangerous bet that completely overwrites the previous losses.

The defeated party has just been the unfortunate victim of a clever scam artist. In other words, the mark has just been hustled. Big time.

Often involves the use of Obfuscating Stupidity. A subtrope of Short Con. Truth in Television. There have been many famous hustlers in Real Life.

Note: This trope does not refer to ANY kind of scam. It specifically refers to a particular con involving a competition of some sort.

May contain spoilers.

Examples of Hustling the Mark include:

Anime and Manga

  • Popped up in Hikaru no Go. Hikaru is looking to recruit a kid from his school who is very good at Go, but who prefers to use his skills in semi-shady Go-parlors where money is bet on the outcomes... and he's not shy about cheating to make sure he takes home the cash, either. Eventually, however, he falls prey to this. A drunken patron plays him for a game, screws up impressively, and loses a small bet. Drunkenly complaining, he suggests a second game, with a much bigger bet, and the kid - thinking him an easy mark - agrees, putting all his money down. However, as soon as they start playing, the 'drunkard' changes, turning out to be a highly skilled and intimidating player, who is apt at sleight of hand himself. Turns out, he's actually a famed hustler who was hired by the local players to teach the kid a lesson, since they were tired of being cheated by him all the time. Sure enough, he beats the kid soundly and takes his money.
  • In Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku, George W. Bush does this against Taizo during a game of Mahjong. Yes, it's one of those series.
  • Duke Devlin does this to Joey in the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, pretending to be a total novice at Duel Monsters, only to reveal the skills of an experienced player a few moves into the match.

Comic Books

  • Occurs in a Dork Tower story arc. After hearing that Igor has never played poker, Ken eagerly invites him to join his poker game. At first, Igor frustrates the other players with his naive questions and obvious tells, but by the end of the evening he makes off with all of the winnings. The final strip shows Igor talking to someone on a cell phone about how he fooled everyone... while being pursued by a very angry Ken.

Film

  • Naturally, this trope was used in The Hustler as well as its Sequel The Color Of Money.
  • Woody Allen's film Take The Money And Run sees the main character attempt to become a pool hustler and fails miserably.
  • The entirety of the movie Diggstown is about this: hustles, counter-hustles and counter-counter-hustles.
  • Enter the Dragon has Those Two Guys pulling this trick in a tournament fight.
  • Happens in one scene of the movie version of Maverick. Maverick asks to sit in on a poker game, but others have heard his reputation and will only let him in after he promises to lose for a full hour. He plays conservatively for an hour and loses a fair amount of money... and then proceeds to clean everyone out once the hour is up because he spent the hour figuring out everyone's tells.
  • This happens in several Abbott and Costello movies. Typically it's also subverted in that Abbott 'tricks' seeming clueless innocent Costello into a game of dice or poker, only for Lou to walk away with everyone's money.

Literature

  • Happened to Nanny Ogg in Witches Abroad, playing the card game Cripple Mr Onion against a group of young men on a riverboat. Then they tried it on Granny Weatherwax. She managed to beat them without even cheating, just using headology.

"... when an obvious innocent sits down with three experienced card sharpers and says 'How do you play this game, then?', someone is about to be shaken down until their teeth fall out."

  • The eponymous Prince Roger demonstrates the Discworld quote above at the beginning of the second book:

"Spades?" Roger asked. "What's spades?"
[cut scene]
"I can' believe I get taken by my own pocking prince," Poertena grumped much later as he and Denat watched Roger walk away, whistling cheerfully while he counted his winnings.

  • Gaunt's Ghosts got in trouble pulling this for an unusual reason. One of the people involved was brought up before the Inquisition - and forced to prove that the method he was using to cheat did not involve the use of psychic powers.
  • Denna pulls this in The Wise Man's Fear when playing cards with Kvothe and his friends.

Live-Action TV

  • Full House has D.J. hustle Michelle into doing the dishes after Michelle refuses to do them together. Michelle feels that she would much rather play jacks. D.J. says " Hey, Jacks, gosh, I was never any good at that. " Michelle challenges her to a game and wages that the loser of the game has to do the dishes by themselves. Good Ol' Deej obliterates her little sister in the game. D.J. even says "call me a sucker, but ok." Probably as close to gambling as a show like that can get.
    • No, the closest they actually got to gambling was when Jesse and Joey played a game of pool. Jesse beats Joey hands down, but then Danny wants to play. Jesse mocks the strait-laced Danny for wanting to play, especially when Danny seemingly tries to use the wrong end of the stick to break. That's when Danny breaks and sinks three balls on his first shot, before mopping the floor with Jesse. Danny makes a hundred bucks off Jesse, and then gives Joey $10 for keeping his mouth shut about Danny going to college on a billiards scholarship.
  • The Suite Life of Zack and Cody had a girl who was an expert at this. She hustled Zack out of some money and cleaned Maddie out of a large number of candy bars.
  • In a recent episode of Jonas LA, Macy pulled this off on Nick and Kevin during a game of golf.
  • Used by Mimi one time on The Drew Carey Show when she was going to hustle Drew at bowling, but then some other guys challenged them and she & Drew ended up teaming up on the Short Con.
  • Happens in an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. First Will racks up considerable debt to a pool shark and has to call Uncle Phil to bail him out. Uncle Phil refuses to give his money to the pool shark, and instead challenges him to a game, unfortunately not being very good at it. And then... Geoffrey... Bring out Lucille..
  • Supernatural has Sam and Dean hustling a pool player like this once onscreen. Though that particular occasion falls through, it is implied that this is how they make a good deal of their money usually, since they don't exactly get paid for their other kind of work.
  • Played straight on a episode of Family Matters in which Eddie and Urkel get hustled at a pool hall for more money than they have and require Carl and Grandma Winslow to get them out of their mess in yet another game of pool.
  • Once in Drake and Josh, Megan first hustled Drake in a game of darts. Drawing inspiration, he goes to the pool hall and starts hustling there. Josh disapproves of the dishonest way to earn money, so he hires his two burly camp counselors to scare Drake straight afterwards.
  • Appears in one episode of Degrassi High. The cool kids invite nerdy, insecure Arthur to their poker party so they can take him for all he's worth. He's totally out of his depth—at one point, he asks, "does three of a kind beat a full house?" But he suddenly starts winning, and by the last hand, it's down to Arthur and the host ...and Arthur wins almost all the money by bluffing when his hand is complete junk. The cool kids are amazed, then Arthur grins and says, "'Does three of a kind beat a full house?' You guys are so gullible."
  • In the Victorious episode Freak The Freak Out, Jade, Tori, and Cat pull off a rather awesome example on Haley and Tara. (Complete with Oh Crap looks on Haley and Tara's faces when they realized Tori wasn't the pushover they thought she would be.)
  • Subverted in an episode of Leverage, in which Ford pretends to pull this trick on his mark, in a game of poker. When the mark realizes he's been scammed, he pulls a gun on Ford in front of a room full of undercover cops, which was the actual con.
  • Hustle, obviously. Though, being Long Con artists, they tend not to go for competition hustles as often as they might. Still frequently enough to be mentioned here, though.
  • Daphne does this at a pool hall in the Frasier episode "You Can't Tell a Crook by His Cover":

Opponent: All you have to do to win the game is pot those five balls. So what do you say we double our bet?
Daphne: Oh, I might as well. I never really have understood this game. Never understood it, when I started playing with me older brothers, at the age of six. And I never understood it during all my formative years, spent mostly in the pool halls of Manchester. Playing in local competitions and club tournaments ... winning cup after cup after cup ... until our poor dad had to convert the pantry into a trophy room. And I can't really claim to understand it -- eight ball in far corner -- even today. But I certainly do enjoy it.

  • In Auction Hunters, Allen and Ton are negotiating with a potential buyer over the price of a pool table. Eventually, Allen convinces the buyer to settle the final price over a game of pool: the buyer wins, the buyer pays his last offer; the auction hunters win, the buyer pays their last offer. The buyer is allowed to pick the game; the buyer picks nine-ball. Cue Ton: "Dude, what's nine-ball?" The buyer is then asked which of the two auction hunters he'll face. Naturally, he picks Ton. The moment the two shake on it, Ton grins very widely, letting the buyer know he's in trouble. After the buyer scratches on the break, Ton proceeds to pot all the balls on the table, finishing with a two-rail shot on the nine ball.

Video Games

  • In Mass Effect 2, the Normandy's engineers at one point invite Shepard to participate in a 'friendly' game of Skyllian Five (the local In Space version of poker). If Shepard simply accepts, you lose some credits, having been hustled by Donnelly. Alternatively, a Paragon Shepard can hustle the hustler, or a Renegade can basically order the engineers to let you win.

Western Animation

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