The majority of people who visit the casino once or who play a game or gamble at an online casino do so in an honest way. Simply because it is fun and exciting to do.
However, in the history of casinos and gambling there have also been people who knew how to cheat and therefore won a lot of money. One example is Ida Summers. Don’t know her name and story? Then read the following story so you will know how she managed to carry out her plan full of cunning and deceit.
Meet Ida Summers
Ida Summers is also known as the Vixen of Las Vegas, or the Shrew. She was the only woman who ever had the guts to cheat the casino in a huge way. She did this not only very successfully but probably all by herself. The story of Ida begins in the late 1950s when she worked as a dealer at the casino.
She dealt the cards at the Blackjack table. After she finished her work, she herself regularly took a seat at the table to play in order to better master her technique. This is a technique in which she worked in a special way and is known as hand mucking.
Cheating without anyone noticing
Ida Summers committed her cheating right under the eyes of her boss who did not notice. In those days women were sometimes used during gambling sessions to create a distraction. This way the men present could cheat. But Ida did this herself and openly committed the fraud without anyone noticing. She is the only woman in the top ten cheaters in the world of gambling who managed to win a huge amount. The other nine are all men.
How did she go about it?
How did Ida’s deception actually work? Her method was not even that complicated but the fact that she got away with it was extraordinary. She made sure during the game that certain cards were hidden in a way that was not seen by the other players or the bank. When she herself was dealt bad cards during Blackjack, she would secretly trade them in for one of the cards she had been holding back so she could walk away with the winnings. In time she would even bring her own cards to do this.
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Swap an entire deck of cards
However, she went a step further in her deception by exchanging an entire deck of cards. At the blackjack table, there is always a deck of cards to keep in reserve. She swapped this very deck unseen and made sure that the cards in it were stacked in such a way as to yield a profit. She made sure that she did not win with them every round because it would be too much of a hassle. This way of cheating is already considerably more difficult because you don’t trade one or a few cards but a whole pack at once. Whether she received help in this from other people has never been fully clarified.
Training other people in card swapping
Ida went a step further by training other people to commit this deception as well. She taught them how to trade cards without being seen and in return received a small portion of their winnings. In this way she also benefited and the players who came didn’t even have to stay very long or bet a lot to return home with a decent profit.
How was the scam discovered?
Most casinos employ people who specialize in detecting cheaters and catching them in the act. During a meeting of employees from different casinos, a woman came up who stood out because she often managed to win a lot and when they discovered that they were talking about the same lady they decided to expose her.
She avoided jail time but was never seen again in Las Vegas
The FBI was even called in to help frame her. The casinos themselves only suspected the cheating on her part but had no evidence of it so she could not be simply arrested. However, with the help of the FBI, she was caught red-handed one night and taken into custody. However, she never made it to jail after serving her remand. The reason why this did not happen is still unclear but one suspects that with her charms she managed to convince the judge not to impose a severe sentence on her. Anyway, after that, people were still paying close attention to whether Ida ever entered the casino again, but she was never seen in Las Vegas again.