Be cunning, play smart, and pickup craps the correct way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is approximately a century old. Modern craps evolved from the 12th Century English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is said to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the 12th century. It’s supposed that Sir William’s knights enjoyed Hazard through a siege on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the fortress’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when exiled by the English, the French headed south and settled in southern Louisiana where they eventually became Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they brought their favorite game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it fair mathematically. It’s said that the Cajuns adjusted the title to craps, which is gotten from the term for the non-winning throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi river boats and throughout the country. A great many consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In 1907, Winn created the current craps setup. He appended the Do not Pass line so players could wager on the dice to not win. At another time, he invented the spaces for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.