Be a Master of Craps – Pointers and Plans: The History of Craps
Be smart, play smart, and pickup craps the correct way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes all the way back to the Crusades, but modern craps is just about a century old. Modern craps come about from the 12th Century English game called Hazard. No one absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is believed to have been invented by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the 12th century. It is theorized that Sir William’s soldiers wagered on Hazard amid a blockade on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was acquired from the castle’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when banished by the British, the French relocated down south and settled in southern Louisiana where they after a while became known as Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they brought their best-loved game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it fair mathematically. It’s believed that the Cajuns changed the title to craps, which is acquired from the name of the bad luck toss of two in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi barges and all over the country. Most consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn created the modern craps layout. He created the Don’t Pass line so players can wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he developed the spots for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.