Las Vegas’s Vixen
Before we talked about ‘people as art’ and how Charles Wells managed to embody that. The same in my view can be said for the notorious Ida Summers. One of the most widely known and successful casino cheats of all time is Ida Summers or the Vegas Vixen. A petite and attractive woman with bold cheating techniques earned thousands of dollars a day in Las Vegas casinos during the 1960s and 1970s, long before the advent of usa online casino culture.
Summer Cheating Techniques
It was her attractiveness that was among Ida Summers’s many cheating techniques. The dealers would get so distracted flirting with her that they did not realize she cheated them out of money. She also used the hand mucking method when she first arrived in Vegas. You muck your own cards by bringing in a few of your own, but you must make sure they perfectly match the cards the casino is using.
She would often steal cards from dealers or convince them to let her take one deck home so she could “practice at home”. Once she returned to the casino, she would hide the cards in her sleeve and swap them without being noticed to reach 21, Blackjack, her game of choice. She was clearly adept in her ‘art’. Nowadays with more and more online casinos around the world, such as online pokies australia, the likes of Ida would be frozen out of the ability to sneak on such trusted platforms.
After Ida became bolder, she used “cooler” as her new method of cheating. Blackjack shoes filled with pre-arranged cards were referred to as cooler or cold decks and were designed to beat the house. It was risky as it involved shoe swapping, but Summers managed to pull it off by recruiting a few male friends to help.
How did it end?
It is unclear how Ida Summers ended up being caught. It was assumed that she had been under FBI surveillance for several months, gathering sufficient evidence to prove her cheating. According to reports, one of her male companions tipped off the FBI. The Mafia controlled the casinos then, so IDA Summers did evade death as well; however, she managed to get off with probation.
