Be smart, play smart, and pickup craps the proper way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes all the way back to the Crusades, but current craps is approximately a century old. Modern craps developed 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 discovered by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It is believed that Sir William’s soldiers played Hazard during a siege on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the citadel’s name.
Early French colonists brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when banished by the English, the French moved down south and discovered refuge in southern Louisiana where they eventually became Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they took their favored game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which is derived from the name of the non-winning throw of 2 in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi riverboats and throughout the nation. Most acknowledge the dice maker John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In 1907, Winn built the current craps layout. He appended the Do not Pass line so gamblers could bet on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he designed the spots for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.