Be smart, play smart, and discover how to play craps the proper way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is just about one hundred years old. Modern craps evolved from the old English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody knows for sure the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is said to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, around the twelfth century. It is supposed that Sir William’s paladins enjoyed Hazard during a siege on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was gotten from the fortification’s name.
Early French settlers brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when banished by the British, the French relocated south and found refuge in southern Louisiana where they eventually became Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which is derived from the term for the losing toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi river boats and throughout the nation. A few acknowledge the dice builder John H. Winn as the creator of modern craps. In 1907, Winn developed the current craps layout. He appended the Don’t Pass line so gamblers can bet on the dice to lose. At another time, he developed the spaces for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.