Be smart, play clever, and discover how to play craps the proper way!
Dice and dice games date all the way back to the Crusades, but modern craps is approximately a century old. Modern craps formed from the 12th Century English game referred to as Hazard. No one knows for sure the birth of the game, although Hazard is said to have been discovered by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the 12th century. It’s supposed that Sir William’s horsemen gambled on Hazard through a blockade on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was acquired from the castle’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when driven away by the British, the French relocated down south and found sanctuary in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became known as Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they took their favored game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which was derived from the name of the losing toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi riverboats and all over the nation. Most think the dice maker John H. Winn as the creator of modern craps. In 1907, Winn developed the modern craps setup. He added the Do not Pass line so gamblers could bet on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he created the spaces for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.
