Master Craps – Tricks and Tactics: The History of Craps
Be cunning, play cunning, and pickup craps the correct way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is approximately 100 years old. Current craps evolved from the ancient English game referred to as Hazard. No one knows for sure the birth of the game, although Hazard is said to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the 12th century. It is supposed that Sir William’s knights played Hazard through a siege on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was derived from the castle’s name.
Early French settlers imported the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when displaced by the English, the French relocated down south and discovered sanctuary in southern Louisiana where they after a while became known as Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it more mathematically fair. It is believed that the Cajuns adjusted the title to craps, which is derived from the name of the losing toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi riverboats and all over the country. Many consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the founder of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn developed the current craps setup. He created the Do not Pass line so players could bet 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.