Be brilliant, play cunning, and become versed in craps the right way!
Dice and dice games date all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is only about one hundred years old. Modern craps formed from the 12th Century Anglo game called Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is said to have been discovered by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, in the twelfth century. It is supposed that Sir William’s knights gambled on Hazard amid a blockade on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was derived from the castle’s name.
Early French colonists brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 18th century, when displaced by the British, the French relocated down south and discovered safety in the south of Louisiana where they at a later time became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they brought their favorite game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns changed the title to craps, which is derived from the name of the losing throw of 2 in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi barges and across the nation. A few acknowledge the dice maker John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn created the modern craps layout. He appended the Don’t Pass line so players could wager on the dice to not win. Later, he invented the spaces for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.