Be brilliant, play smart, and become versed in craps the correct way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is just about a century old. Modern craps formed from the ancient Anglo game referred to as Hazard. No one absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is said to have been created by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It is believed that Sir William’s knights bet on Hazard through a siege on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was gotten from the fortress’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 18th century, when displaced by the British, the French relocated south and located sanctuary in the south of Louisiana where they eventually became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it more mathematically fair. It is believed that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which is derived from the term for the bad luck throw of two in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi barges and all over the nation. A few consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In 1907, Winn designed the modern craps layout. He added the Don’t Pass line so gamblers can bet on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he invented the spaces for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.