Be cunning, play brilliant, and pickup craps the correct way!
Dice and dice games date back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is just about a century old. Modern craps formed from the old Anglo game referred to as Hazard. No one knows for certain the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is believed to have been made up by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It’s presumed that Sir William’s paladins bet 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 Canada. In the 18th century, when driven away by the British, the French moved south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they at a later time became known as Cajuns. When they were driven out of Acadia, they took their favored game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it fair mathematically. It’s said that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which was acquired from the name of the bad luck throw of two in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi riverboats and all over the nation. A few consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the creator of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn created the current craps setup. He appended the Do not Pass line so gamblers can wager on the dice to lose. Later, he invented the spots for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.