Be a Master of Craps – Tricks and Techniques: The History of Craps
Be clever, play cunning, and master craps the correct way!
Dice and dice games goes all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is just about a century old. Modern craps developed from the ancient Anglo game called Hazard. No one knows for certain the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is said to have been created by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the 12th century. It is believed that Sir William’s horsemen enjoyed Hazard amid a siege on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was acquired from the fortress’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French headed south and located refuge in southern Louisiana where they at a later time became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they brought their favored game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which is gotten from the term for the losing throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi scows and throughout the country. Many think the dice maker John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In 1907, Winn created the modern craps setup. He added the Do not Pass line so players can wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he developed the spaces for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.