Hi Rick,
I just wanted to offer my point of view, not that it's right or wrong.
If the sucker in this situation was willing to play in the first place, it was his own fault and not the player's. If you intend to gamble then you should be prepared to lose.
With regards to hustling being one of the problems with this game, you may be right. Hustling has been a part of giving this game a bad name for a long time. But primarily it has a lot to do with people not knowing what they are getting in to. Ignorance to some degree, is a beautiful thing!
I personally don't hustle people. Not that I haven't in the past. In my generation of play, and many others that I know of that were playing in my "prime", we were taught by our elders to stall, sandbag or whatever you want to call it. Other people were doing it, and it seemed ok.
Today, I think that the hustler breed of player is dying out for the most part. More people are playing pool for the love of the game and the desire to be good at it rather than to hustle.
Never-the-less, if you are going to gamble, consider that you may lose, and you never really know if you are being hustled!
Louis
PS: Practice until you are jam up, don't give weight to strangers, and you won't have to worry too much about being hustled.