Be clever, play cunning, and learn how to play craps the correct way!
Dice and dice games date all the way back to the Crusades, but current craps is only about one hundred years old. Current craps evolved from the 12th Century Anglo game called Hazard. Nobody knows for certain the ancestry of the game, however Hazard is believed to have been invented by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It is theorized that Sir William’s knights bet on Hazard amid a siege on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was acquired from the citadel’s name.
Early French settlers brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when driven away by the English, the French moved south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their preferred game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns adjusted the title to craps, which is derived from the name of the losing throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi river boats and all over the country. A good many consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the creator of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn designed the current craps layout. He created the Do not Pass line so gamblers could bet on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he developed the boxes for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.
