Be brilliant, play cunning, and discover how to play craps the correct way!
Dice and dice games date all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is approximately a century old. Current craps formed from the 12th Century Anglo game called Hazard. No one knows for sure the origin of the game, but Hazard is said to have been discovered by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It’s presumed that Sir William’s soldiers bet on Hazard through a siege on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the citadel’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when banished by the British, the French relocated south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they eventually became Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they took their favored game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which was gotten from the term for the non-winning throw of two in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi barges and across the country. A few think the dice maker John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In 1907, Winn designed the modern craps layout. He added the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he created the boxes for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.