Be smart, play clever, and discover how to play craps the correct way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is only about a century old. Current craps developed from the old English game called Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the origin of the game, however Hazard is believed to have been discovered by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, in the 12th century. It’s presumed that Sir William’s soldiers played Hazard amid a blockade on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was gotten from the citadel’s name.
Early French settlers imported the game Hazard to Canada. In the 1700s, when displaced by the British, the French relocated south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they took their favored game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which is derived from the term for the losing throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi scows and across the country. Most consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the founder of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn created the modern craps setup. He added the Don’t Pass line so players could wager on the dice to lose. At another time, he created the spots for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.