Be brilliant, play cunning, and become versed in craps the correct way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Crusades, but current craps is just about 100 years old. Modern craps formed from the old English game called Hazard. No one knows for sure the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is said to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, in the twelfth century. It is believed that Sir William’s knights bet on Hazard through a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was gotten from the fortification’s name.
Early French colonists brought the game Hazard to Canada. In the 18th century, when displaced by the English, the French headed south and located refuge in the south of Louisiana where they at a later time became Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it mathematically fair. It is believed that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which was acquired from the term for the non-winning throw of two in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi riverboats and throughout the nation. Most consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the creator of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn built the modern craps setup. He created the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he created the spots for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.