Be brilliant, play cunning, and become versed in craps the correct way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is only about a century old. Modern craps evolved from the ancient English game called Hazard. No one knows for sure the origin of the game, but Hazard is said to have been discovered by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the twelfth century. It is supposed that Sir William’s horsemen bet on Hazard during a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was acquired from the fortress’s name.
Early French colonists imported the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when driven away by the British, the French moved south and settled in southern Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns changed the title to craps, which was acquired from the term for the non-winning toss of two in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi scows and throughout the country. A good many consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn created the current craps setup. He appended the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he established the spaces for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.
