Be cunning, play cunning, and become versed in craps the ideal way!
Dice and dice games date all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is only about 100 years old. Current craps formed from the ancient Anglo game referred to as Hazard. No one absolutely knows the ancestry 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’s presumed that Sir William’s horsemen gambled on Hazard during a siege on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the fortress’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when expelled by the British, the French headed south and found sanctuary in the south of Louisiana where they eventually became Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their favored game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which is derived from the term for the bad luck toss of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi riverboats and throughout the country. Most consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the creator of current craps. In 1907, Winn assembled the current craps setup. He added the Do not Pass line so players could bet on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he established the boxes for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.