Master Craps – Hints and Tactics: The Past of Craps
Be clever, play smart, and become versed in craps the proper way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes back to the Crusades, but modern craps is only about one hundred years old. Current craps evolved from the old Anglo game referred to as Hazard. No one absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is believed to have been created by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the 12th century. It is presumed that Sir William’s knights gambled on Hazard amid a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the castle’s name.
Early French colonists imported the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 18th century, when expelled by the British, the French moved down south and found sanctuary in the south of Louisiana where they eventually became Cajuns. When they were driven out of Acadia, they took their favored game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which was gotten from the name of the losing throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi river boats and across the nation. Most acknowledge the dice builder John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In 1907, Winn designed the modern craps layout. He appended the Do not Pass line so players can wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he designed the boxes for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.