Be clever, play cunning, and master craps the correct way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Crusades, but modern craps is only about 100 years old. Modern craps formed from the old English game called Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is said to have been made up by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, in the 12th century. It’s believed that Sir William’s horsemen enjoyed Hazard during a blockade on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the citadel’s name.
Early French settlers brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 18th century, when expelled by the British, the French moved south and found sanctuary in the south of Louisiana where they at a later time became known as Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they brought their preferred game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it fair mathematically. It is said that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which is gotten from the name of the bad luck throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi riverboats and across the country. Most consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In 1907, Winn created the current craps setup. He put in place the Do not Pass line so players could wager on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he created the spaces for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.
