Be a Master of Craps – Pointers and Schemes: The History of Craps
Be clever, play brilliant, and discover how to play craps the proper way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Crusades, but current craps is just about one hundred years old. Current craps formed from the ancient Anglo game called Hazard. No one absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, however Hazard is said to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It’s supposed that Sir William’s knights played Hazard amid a siege on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was acquired from the fortification’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when banished by the British, the French headed down south and located refuge in southern Louisiana where they eventually became Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they brought their best-loved game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it fair mathematically. It’s said that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which was acquired from the name of the bad luck toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi river boats and throughout the country. A great many consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn designed the current craps layout. He put in place the Do not Pass line so gamblers can bet on the dice to lose. At another time, he created the spaces for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.