A Flip Summon, known as a Reverse Summon in the OCG, occurs when a player manually flip a face-down Defense Position monster into face-up Attack Position. A player must Flip Summon to flip his/her own monsters face-up without a card effect. Flip Summons are not considered Normal Summons or Special Summons. A player can Flip Summon as many times as he/she wishes to, as long as he/she has the ability to do so. Flip Summoning is considered manually changing a battle position, thus a player cannot Flip Summon the same monster more than once per turn, nor switch the Flip Summoned monster back to Defense Position without the aide of card effects.

When a Flip Effect Monster is Flip Summoned its Flip Effect will activate. Flip Effects will also activate if the monster is flipped face-up in the Damage Step or if flipped face-up by an effect that does not negate Flip Effects, such as the effect of "Swords of Revealing Light". However, Flip Summon Trigger Effects must be triggered by a proper Flip Summon, not by the card being flipped in any other way.

Monsters that are destroyed by the effects of "Mystic Swordsman LV2", "Paladin of White Dragon", etc, are not flipped face-up and their Flip Effects do not activate.

With cards such as "Stealth Bird" or "Guardian Sphinx", a player can Flip Summon it and use its own effect to flip it face-down again in the same turn. This is possible because of those card's effects and cannot otherwise be done.

A monster flipped face-up by a card effect such as "Book of Taiyou" or "Stop Defense" or as a result of battle is not considered a Flip Summon. Only flipping a Set monster manually is considered a Flip Summon. However, because the monster was flipped face-up, any Flip Effects will activate.