Learn to Play Craps – Tricks and Strategies: The History of Craps
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 current craps is only about 100 years old. Modern craps evolved from the old Anglo game called Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is said to have been created by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, in the twelfth century. It is theorized that Sir William’s knights gambled on Hazard through a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was derived from the castle’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Canada. In the 18th century, when displaced by the English, the French headed south and settled in southern Louisiana where they eventually became known as Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they took their favored game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it fair mathematically. It is believed that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which was acquired from the term for the losing toss of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi riverboats and all over the country. A great many think the dice builder John H. Winn as the founder of modern craps. In 1907, Winn designed the modern craps setup. He appended the Do not Pass line so players could bet on the dice to not win. At another time, he designed the spaces for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.
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