Be brilliant, play clever, and pickup craps the correct way!
Dice and dice games goes back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is just about 100 years old. Current craps evolved from the ancient Anglo game referred to as Hazard. Nobody knows for certain the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is believed to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It is supposed that Sir William’s knights gambled on Hazard during a siege on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was derived from the castle’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when displaced by the British, the French relocated south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they were driven out of Acadia, they brought their favorite game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which was derived from the term for the bad luck toss of two in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi river boats and across the nation. Most consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In 1907, Winn assembled the current craps setup. He created the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could bet on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he designed the spots for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.
