Be brilliant, play cunning, and pickup craps the right way!
Dice and dice games goes all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is approximately 100 years old. Modern craps come about from the ancient Anglo game referred to as Hazard. No one absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is said to have been created by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the 12th century. It’s believed that Sir William’s paladins bet on Hazard during a siege on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was acquired from the castle’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Canada. In the 18th century, when displaced by the English, the French moved down south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they eventually became known as Cajuns. When they were driven out of Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it fair mathematically. It is said that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which is derived from the term for the non-winning throw of two in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi scows and all over the nation. Most think the dice builder John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn built the modern craps layout. He appended the Do not Pass line so players could bet on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he created the spots for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.