Be brilliant, play clever, and become versed in craps the correct way!
Dice and dice games goes all the way back to the Crusades, but modern craps is only about 100 years old. Current craps evolved from the 12th Century Anglo game called Hazard. No one absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, however Hazard is said to have been created by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, in the 12th century. It’s believed that Sir William’s soldiers enjoyed Hazard through a siege on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the castle’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French headed down south and found refuge in southern Louisiana where they a while later became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which is derived from the term for the non-winning throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi barges and across the country. Most acknowledge the dice maker John H. Winn as the creator of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn assembled the current craps setup. He appended the Do not Pass line so players could wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he designed the boxes for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.