Be a Master of Craps – Tricks and Tactics: The History of Craps
Be brilliant, play smart, and pickup craps the correct way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is approximately a century old. Current craps formed from the ancient Anglo game called Hazard. No one knows for certain the beginnings of the game, but Hazard is believed to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the 12th century. It’s theorized that Sir William’s soldiers bet on Hazard during a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was gotten from the fortification’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French headed south and discovered safety in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they were driven out of Acadia, they brought their favored game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which was derived from the name of the bad luck toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi riverboats and across the country. A few consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn assembled the modern craps setup. He created the Do not Pass line so players can bet on the dice to lose. At another time, he invented the spaces for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.