Master Craps – Hints and Strategies: The Background of Craps
Be brilliant, play cunning, and pickup craps the correct way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is just about a century old. Modern craps come about from the ancient English game referred to as Hazard. No one knows for sure the origin of the game, however Hazard is said to have been made up by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It’s presumed that Sir William’s paladins gambled on Hazard through a blockade on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the castle’s name.
Early French colonists brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 18th century, when expelled by the British, the French moved south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they brought their favorite game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it more mathematically fair. It is believed that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which was gotten from the name of the non-winning throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi river boats and across the country. Most consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn developed the current craps layout. He put in place the Do not Pass line so players can wager on the dice to not win. At another time, he created the spaces for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.