Ida Summers
The story of Ida Summers, who raked in thousands at blackjack by perfecting 'hand mucking' and switching in 'coolers,' pre-stacked decks designed to win. 'The Roulette Assault.' Looks at Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo, who discovered the tendency of certain numbers to come up more often on a roulette wheel.
Aug 4, 2005
The History Channel's series, 'Breaking Vegas,' is created out of some of the most fascinating stories of people who went on incredible runs raking in thousands -- sometimes millions -- of dollars from the casinos.
Ida Summers Wikipedia
According to the source this was thought to be a Commencement photo of the Avalon school students. Photo was taken at the Avalon Moravian Church sometime between 1909 and 1911. The teacher, Miss Ida Summers, is standing on the left front beside another adult. Download Full Resolution: (2000 x 1283 pixels) Size: 750 Kb. SUMMERS, Ida Elizabeth (Tindall) - Age 84, of Fenton, died Thursday, November 19, 2020. A private graveside service will be held at Lakeview Cemetery in Clarkston. Those desiring may make contributions to the Salvation Army. Ida was born July 18, 1936 in Fenton, the daughter of Leroy and Barbara (Crawford) Tindall. Impactante documental del History Channel sobre la gran estafadora en el juego de cartas blackjack o 21 del casino Ida Summers. Conozca sus trucos, estrategi. Wells bronze statue to be unveiled July 16 By Kym Clark February 6, 2021 at 7:38 AM CST - Updated February 6 at 7:42 AM MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - This month we are celebrating Black History.
Most of us don't connect The History Channel with gambling programs, but World War II documentaries. I happened across the show one night while multitasking -- doing some writing, playing holdem on PokerStars, and looking for a good program to watch. I was hooked immediately. Besides loving poker, I love visiting Las Vegas and am a history buff as well. So how could I pass up this show? I ended up catching several more episodes, and if you like gambling, Vegas, history, or just a great story, this show is for you.
How many people have 'the perfect system,' or head to Vegas convinced lady luck is on their side? A few do quite well, and indeed a good poker player, card counter, sports or thoroughbred handicapper can come back in the black. Most, though, come back after finding their system to beat the casino ended up beating up their bankroll.
But some people do find that 'perfect system' or come up with ways to beat the casino. Some of these are legal, some not. And a lot of them make great stories.
A Unique Twist.Breaking Vegas is a unique show that is part documentary, part reenactment. I admit, when I hear 'reenactment,' what comes to mind are low-budget productions and actors who have been nominated for a Razzy award. But Breaking Vegas is able to successfully pull it off. The program combines recent and historical footage, dramatizations, factual background and interviews with those involved. Some of the reenactment includes people who were actually involved in fleecing the casino. In addition, the viewer hears from those who have to prevent the casino being taken for a ride. At the conclusion of each episode, we get the lowdown as to where those who came up with the schemes are today.
Each episode covers the rise of the people involved in trying to beat the casino and what happened as a result of their efforts. One of my favorite episodes, 'Professor Blackjack,' covered the story of Ed Thorp. Odds are you may not have heard of Thorp, but you have heard of card counting. Thorp was an MIT math professor, and came up with the system that uses math to beat the game of blackjack. In the show, we see how he came up with the theory, and how he was able to prove it works with the help of Manny Kimmel -- a New Yorker with organized crime connections, who offers to put up money for Thorp to test his system so they could both cash in. Thorp is hardly a hardcore gambler; rather, a guy who loves math and wants to prove his theory. The viewer has a great time watching Thorp leaving pit bosses at a loss as to how he is making so much at the tables. Interviews with the real Ed Thorp are included.
What’s also great about the show is that it covers many different types of gambling, rather than just blackjack card counting or slot machine scams. Even games I wasn’t all that interested in were fascinating to watch when people come up with a system to win.
Episode Guide.Breaking Vegas just ended its first season, a run of 13 shows. But fear not. If you missed the show you can still catch it in reruns. Here’s a quick rundown of the season episodes:
'Slot Scoundrel.' Profiling Tommy Glenn Carmichael, who came up with a scam to use slot machines as his personal ATM.
'Beat the Wheel.' Childhood friends and physics geniuses Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard came up with a system to beat roulette.
'Professor Blackjack.' Profiling Ed Thorp and card-counting.
'The Gadget Gambler.' Feature about Keith Taft, a family man who came up with numerous gadgets to cheat at blackjack.
'Card Count King.' A look at Tommy Hyland and his team of card counters.
'The Ultimate Cheat.' How Richard Marcus used past-posting to evade casino detection and bilk millions.
'Slot Buster.' Ron Harris, computer whiz and ex-Nevada Gaming Control Board employee, develops a way to cheat slot machines he was supposed to be verifying as legitimate.
'Blackjack Man.' Profile of Ken Uston, Pacific Stock Exchange vice president, who on weekends hit casinos with a card counting team.
'Vegas Vixen.' The story of Ida Summers, who raked in thousands at blackjack by perfecting 'hand mucking' and switching in 'coolers,' pre-stacked decks designed to win.
'The Roulette Assault.' Looks at Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo, who discovered the tendency of certain numbers to come up more often on a roulette wheel. He crushed the casino in Madrid then went on to Vegas and European casinos.
'The Prince of Poker.' Featuring Harper’s Magazine writer Jim McManus, an amateur poker player who competed in the 2000 World Series of Poker.
'Dice Dominator.' The story of Dominic LoRiggio, who mastered controlling the flight of dice in craps in 1997.
'Counterfeit King.' Profiling Louis Colavecchio, who took on the difficult task of counterfeiting coins.
Previous episodes will continue to air on Tuesdays at 9 pm. Eastern and Pacific time this summer. If you’d like to know which episodes are going to air, follow this link to the History Channel’s page on Breaking Vegas. You also will want to check www.tvguide.com from time to time and do a search for the show, as it may be aired at different times besides on just Tuesday (I caught a mini-marathon one Saturday afternoon).
Ida Summers Photos
At this time, it’s not known whether there will be a second installment of Breaking Vegas episodes. According to Jenna Farkas, publicist for The History Channel, the decision on a second season won’t be made until later this year. However, Farkas said that the ratings have been solid. 'People seem very interested in it. The people who watch the show really love the show,' said Farkas. As a fan of the show, I can say that Farkas is right. If you haven’t had a chance to catch the episodes, check out some of the re-broadcasts this summer.
For as long as casinos have been around there have been people trying to cheat them. Casinos dedicate a lot of resources to catching cheaters, and they are usually pretty good at doing so.
However, throughout history there have been a few cases of people who have won fortunes by cheating.
Many of these have been caught eventually, but some of them have gotten away with it completely. Of course, the most successful cheaters are those that we have never heard of and never will.
On this page we will look at some of the famous cheaters and the methods they used to cheat, scam, or hustle casinos out of substantial sums of money.
Tommy Glenn Carmichael
Carmichael is one of the most successful slot machine cheats, although he has spent time in prison for his crimes. He began cheating slot machines in 1980 when he used a metal device that was inserted into the coin slot and then triggered a payout.
When the big casinos started updating their slots with newer machines, Carmichael found his device no longer worked with them.
As a result he moved to the smaller gambling establishments in Las Vegas that still used older machines. He was eventually caught and sentenced to five years in prison.
This sentence failed to act as a deterrent though, and Carmichael resumed his cheating upon his release in 1987. Slot machine technology had advanced during his spell in prison and therefore he had to change his methods.
Carmichael bought one of the new machines and set about designing a new device that he could use to cheat. He came up with something that has since been called the monkey paw, or slider.
The principle was the same as his original device; it was inserted into the coin slot and caused the release of coins from the machines. He used it successfully until technology advanced again and he once more had to refine his methods.
He bought one of the new electronic slot games and again developed a way to beat them.
It worked so well that Carmichael made money from selling it to other cheaters, as well as using it himself.
Perhaps inevitably, Carmichael was eventually arrested for using the wand in 1996. Charges were dropped on that occasion, but he was arrested again in 1998 and once more in 1999. He pled guilty to running an illegal gambling enterprise and was sentenced to more prison time.
He is now banned from playing in casinos, but he does work with them producing anti-cheating devices.
Richard Marcus has been labeled as one of the greatest cheaters in the history of gambling. That isn’t unreasonable, given that he made a lot of money and never got caught. The only reason anyone knows about his cheating exploits is because he chose to write a book about his life after he had made enough money and stopped cheating.
Marcus named his method of cheating the “Savannah,” and it was in theory quite simple. It took an awful lot of courage and a fair amount of skill.
It was very similar to the past-posting cheating techniques that had been used, but with one key difference. Traditional past-posters would add chips to a winning bet using sleight of hand, but Marcus did it the other way round. He would remove chips from a losing bet.
He would go up to the roulette table and place a couple of chips down as his bet. The top chip would be a $5 chip, or some other small denomination, but underneath would be a higher value chip.
He placed the top chip in a way that the bottom chip could not be seen. If his bet lost, he would grab his chips (which you are not actually allowed to do, hence the drunken act) and fling them at the dealer. During this move he would swap the higher value chip for another $5 chip.
If, however, his bet won then he would make a big deal of celebrating. Invariably the dealer would be a little confused, assuming he had just staked two $5 chips. At this point Marcus would point out the fact that the chip underneath was more valuable.
Because he had legitimately placed the bet, even if surveillance was checked by casino security they would find nothing wrong. He was effectively cheating on his losing bets rather than his winning ones, and it’s winning bets that tend to be scrutinized.
Using this method he was able to win thousands on his winning bets and lose only a few dollars on his losing bets. Because of the way it worked, he managed to avoid being caught. He now works against the cheaters, consulting for casinos, and teaching them how to avoid being cheated.
In 1995, Reid McNeal hit a Keno jackpot at Bally’s Park Place Casino Resort in Atlantic City, for $100,000. Suspicions were immediately raised when McNeal showed very little emotion following the win and asked to be paid in cash.
Ida Summers Vegas
As jackpot wins of a certain size have to be verified by state gaming officials under New Jersey law, an investigation occurred as a result.
The investigation led back to Ron Harris, a computer programmer working for the Nevada Gaming Control Board. Harris was responsible for finding bugs and flaws in the software of electronic gaming machines.
It transpired that Harris had been using his position to access and modify software in slot machines to pay out substantial wins if a precise sequence of coins were inserted. With his accomplice he had successfully cheated thousands of dollars and gone undetected.
Using his predictions his accomplice, McNeal, could be guaranteed a jackpot win.
McNeal duly won the jackpot at Atlantic City but, as we have described above, that was the beginning of the end for the two cheats. Harris was sentenced to seven years in prison, and released after serving two.
Throughout the history of gambling scams, women have typically been used to cause diversions while their male accomplices carry out the actual scandal.
Ida Summers was different; she certainly used her beauty and charm to distract pit bosses and dealers, but she also did the cheating herself.
Ida Summers Movie
Back in the 1960s she became known as the Vegas Vixen for her ability to cheat Las Vegas casinos.
This involved using sleight of hand to remove and add cards to the table when required. She then progressed to adding whole decks of cards that were prearranged to ensure the house lost. These decks were known as cold decks, or coolers.
Although successful for a while, Summers was eventually caught and arrested. Gaming officials in Vegas had become suspicious here, and together with the FBI, launched an investigation.
Seeing as she only received probation rather than a custodial sentence, it seems her looks and charm may have had an effect in court too.
Ida Summers
French woman Monique Laurent, along with her crew consisting of family and friends, managed to win over $1 million from the roulette tables at Deauville Casino. Their winning had nothing to do with luck.
But rather thanks to some sophisticated equipment and the help of a rogue roulette dealer. Considering the scam took place in 1973, it was somewhat advanced for the time.
Laurent had her crew use a roulette ball that had been tampered with to insert a radio receiver.
With 90% accuracy she could make the ball land in a group of six numbers. Other members of the crew would place the necessary bets and collect the winnings.
Ida Summers
The casino sensed something was wrong, but they couldn’t work out what the problem was. They had the roulette wheel checked and monitored the table and the dealer, but they found nothing wrong. Laurent and her crew therefore continued to rack up the winnings.
They were only caught eventually as a direct result of Laurent’s beauty.
The owner of the casino took something of a shine to Laurent and made romantic overtures. She rebuffed him and he didn’t take it well. He began to suspect her of wrongdoing when he noticed that she was always at the roulette table costing the casino money.
She was always seemingly alone and only appeared to be placing occasional bets. Working out that the cigarette packet might be involved he asked Laurent for a cigarette and the game was up.
Louis Colavecchio is a counterfeiter who used his skills to manufacture incredibly accurate reproductions of slot machine coins. He then used these coins in many American casinos with initially great success.
His operation was on a grand scale and he was producing thousands upon thousands of coins.
When he was eventually arrested in 1998, following an investigation after casinos had started to notice sizable surpluses of the coins in their inventories.
Law enforcement seized his stash of coins and the tools used to make them. Such was the volume of this equipment they had to rent storage facilities just to house it all.
When Colavecchio was released in 2006 he resumed his activities, but was arrested again after just a few months. He brokered a deal to reveal the secrets of his operation so that casinos could avoid being stung in this way again.
Nikrasch, also known as Dennis McAndrew, is another slot machine cheater. In fact, he is arguably the biggest known slot machine cheater in history. It has been said that he posed a serious risk to the integrity of the whole slot machine industry.
Together with his crew, it’s believed that Nikrasch made over $15 million using his sophisticated methods.
There has been a lot written about Nikrasch, particularly about his downfall, and much of it’s speculation. It’s widely believed that he was set up by someone who knew about his operation, but he himself has admitted that he does not know who or why.
He was arrested in 1998 while trying to cheat his way to a huge jackpot in a Las Vegas casino. Subsequently, he agreed to exchange some of his secrets in return for a reduced sentence.
Nickrasch had served time in prison before, having been convicted in the 1980s for his role in cheating the mechanical slot machines of the time. As a master locksmith with mechanical expertise, he had developed a method for forcing payouts from these machines.
Following his time in prison he returned to Las Vegas and soon began planning a return to his cheating ways.
By this time, though, slot machines were very different. The technology was now computerized rather than mechanical and the machines were vastly more difficult to manipulate.
This didn’t stop Nikrasch however, and he began to work on developing new methods for beating them. He did indeed come up with an advanced system for doing so.
His new system required a crew of people, which Nikrasch recruited using his contacts. He would visit a casino and, with members of his crew covering him from video surveillance and security personnel, he would break into a machine using an untraceable method.
After he left, another member of his crew would then come and win the jackpot: seeming legitimate. It’s not known for sure how many times Nikrasch pulled this off before he was caught. Equally, no-one knows how long he might have been able to get away with it if had he not been set up.
Although Brennan is a thief rather than a cheater, he deserves to be mentioned here for the simplicity and apparent success of his heist. Brennan was a cashier at Stardust Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
In 1992 as he was leaving work, Brennan decided to fill a bag with half a million dollars in cash and chips. He calmly walked out of the casino and has never been seen since.
There have been rumors that he was killed by an accomplice who didn’t want to split the proceeds, but there has never been any evidence to back this up.
The common belief is that he is still alive, somewhere in the world, enjoying his ill-gotten gains.