Pickup Craps – Hints and Strategies: The History of Craps
Be brilliant, play smart, and pickup craps the right way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is just about 100 years old. Modern craps formed from the ancient Anglo game referred to as Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the beginnings of the game, although Hazard is believed to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It is presumed that Sir William’s paladins enjoyed Hazard during a blockade on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was gotten from the fortress’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 18th century, when expelled by the English, the French headed down south and discovered safety in southern Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their preferred game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns changed the title to craps, which is derived from the term for the non-winning toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi scows and all over the country. Many acknowledge the dice maker John H. Winn as the founder of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn created the modern craps setup. He added the Don’t Pass line so gamblers can wager on the dice to lose. At another time, he established the spaces for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.