Be clever, play brilliant, and master craps the right way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Crusades, but modern craps is approximately a century old. Modern craps evolved from the old Anglo game referred to as Hazard. No one absolutely knows the beginnings of the game, although Hazard is believed to have been discovered by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It’s supposed that Sir William’s paladins played Hazard through a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was acquired from the fortress’s name.
Early French colonists brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when driven away by the English, the French relocated down south and located safety in southern Louisiana where they eventually became Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it fair mathematically. It’s said that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which was acquired from the term for the losing toss of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi scows and throughout the nation. A few consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn developed the current craps setup. He added the Don’t Pass line so players can bet on the dice to lose. At another time, he developed the boxes for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.
