Be clever, play cunning, and discover how to play craps the right way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is approximately one hundred years old. Modern craps developed from the old English game called Hazard. No one knows for certain the birth of the game, but Hazard is said to have been invented by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the twelfth century. It’s presumed that Sir William’s soldiers gambled on Hazard through a siege on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was acquired from the citadel’s name.
Early French settlers imported the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French relocated down south and settled in southern Louisiana where they eventually became known as Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they brought their favorite game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it fair mathematically. It is believed that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which is derived from the name of the bad luck toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi riverboats and throughout the nation. A few think the dice maker John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn built the current craps layout. He put in place the Don’t Pass line so players can wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he established the boxes for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.