Be clever, play smart, and pickup craps the right way!
Dice and dice games goes all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is approximately one hundred years old. Current craps formed from the old Anglo game called Hazard. No one knows for sure the ancestry of the game, however Hazard is believed to have been made up by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the 12th century. It is believed that Sir William’s horsemen gambled on Hazard through a blockade on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the fortification’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when expelled by the British, the French relocated down south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they brought their best-loved game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it more mathematically fair. It is believed that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which is gotten from the term for the non-winning toss of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi scows and across the country. A few consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In 1907, Winn created the modern craps layout. He put in place the Don’t Pass line so gamblers can wager on the dice to lose. Later, he invented the spaces for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.