Master Craps – Tips and Techniques: The Background of Craps
Be smart, play brilliant, and pickup craps the proper way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is just about a century old. Modern craps developed from the ancient English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody knows for sure the beginnings of the game, however Hazard is said to have been made up by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the 12th century. It’s theorized that Sir William’s soldiers enjoyed Hazard through a siege on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was gotten from the castle’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Canada. In the 1700s, when driven away by the English, the French headed down south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they at a later time became Cajuns. When they were driven out of Acadia, they brought their favored game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it fair mathematically. It’s said that the Cajuns altered the title to craps, which is acquired from the term for the losing toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi river boats and throughout the country. A few consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the creator of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn created the modern craps setup. He added the Don’t Pass line so players could bet on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he invented the spots for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.