Be cunning, play smart, and discover how to play craps the right way!
Dice and dice games goes back to the Crusades, but modern 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 birth of the game, but Hazard is said to have been discovered by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It is theorized that Sir William’s soldiers enjoyed Hazard amid a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was gotten from the citadel’s name.
Early French settlers brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when displaced by the English, the French relocated down south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they at a later time became Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their preferred game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it fair mathematically. It is believed that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which is derived from the name of the losing toss of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi scows and throughout the nation. Many consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the creator of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn built the modern craps layout. He added the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he invented the spaces for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.