Be brilliant, play brilliant, and pickup craps the right way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes all the way back to the Crusades, but current craps is only about a century old. Current craps evolved from the ancient English game called Hazard. No one absolutely knows the beginnings of the game, although Hazard is said to have been invented by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It’s presumed that Sir William’s paladins played Hazard through a blockade on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the castle’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when exiled by the English, the French relocated south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they eventually became Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they brought their favored game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which is acquired from the term for the losing throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi riverboats and across the country. Many consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the creator of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn developed the current craps setup. He created the Do not Pass line so players could bet on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he developed the boxes for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.
