Be clever, play clever, and pickup craps the proper way!
Dice and dice games date all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is only about a century old. Current craps formed from the old English game called Hazard. No one knows for certain the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is believed to have been created by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, in the twelfth century. It’s theorized that Sir William’s paladins gambled on Hazard amid a blockade on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was gotten from the fortress’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Canada. In the 18th century, when driven away by the British, the French headed down south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their favored game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which was derived from the name of the losing throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi scows and throughout the country. A few think the dice builder John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In 1907, Winn assembled the modern craps layout. He put in place the Do not Pass line so gamblers can bet on the dice to not win. Later, he developed the boxes for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.