The Story about Ida Summers

The gorgeous Ida Summers used all her beauty and talent in the early 60s to pull off some advanced card switches to hustle the casinos. Most casino cheats were women have been involved are diversions. A beautiful woman gets the attention of a male pit boss and the cheat move is on.

With Ida Summers it was different, she not only got the attention of the pit bosses, she pulled off the cheat moves right in front of them. Ida Summer became know as the Vegas Vixen for her master at cunning and quickness to get the money off the table.

How did Ida Summer do to Hustle the Casinos

Ida Summers used a lot of charm and shiftiness to bring in thousands of dollars. First of all, she didn’t look like the typical casino cheater. With her stunning looks, she could fool any pit boss to look somewhere else than on the Blackjack table were she pull her cheats. She had specialized in “hand mucking” and switching in “coolers” at the blackjack tables.

Hand mucking means that you conceal one card that is in play at the table. It can also involve that you completely remove the card from the table and return it to play when it will benefit the player. This was easily done with Ida’s attractiveness and sociability.

She basically switched cards in and out of the deck as she wanted.

At this time most of the Las Vegas Casinos had mob connections to intimidate cheaters and they weren’t as kind to them as casinos are today. That’s why Ida’s next move would be even more brazen…

Ida’s next move to hustle the casinos

What Ida did was to take it one step further and started to insert whole cold decks in play at the blackjack tables. A cold deck is a deck that has been pre-arranged by the player and brought into the game by switching it with the deck in play.

This would turn the players at the table to winners in as many hands as you´d like. Most of the times some losing hands were placed in the deck to make the scam look more believable.

As you could imagine this is a very hard, brave and dangerous maneuver to pull in a casino but if it was someone that could do it, it was Ida Summers.

What made this cheat so bold and hard to perform was that the original deck had to be physically lifted off the table and changed with the pre-arranged one in a split second.

After Ida had slipped the cold deck on the table she would leave the table herself and have other players to be dealt by the cold deck. If she did it this way and the players at the table got caught the would never catch Ida with the removed deck.

FBI brought her down

Even though Ida was very careful the Nevada Gaming Commission together with the FBI caught up with Ida and her casino cheat partners.

Even in court Ida managed to impress with her skills and looks, she only got probation for the trouble she made in Las Vegas.

Ida Summer has become a true legend in casino cheating forums and is today inducted into the Hall of “Famestress”.