Be cunning, play brilliant, and become versed in 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 only about 100 years old. Modern craps evolved from the ancient English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is said to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, in the twelfth century. It is believed that Sir William’s soldiers enjoyed Hazard during a blockade on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was gotten from the fortification’s name.
Early French settlers imported the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when displaced by the British, the French moved south and located sanctuary in the south of Louisiana where they eventually became Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they brought their preferred game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which is derived from the name of the non-winning toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi river boats and all over the nation. A few acknowledge the dice builder John H. Winn as the creator of current craps. In 1907, Winn designed the current craps layout. He added the Do not Pass line so players could wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he designed the boxes for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.
