Be a Master of Craps – Tricks and Techniques: The History of Craps
Be brilliant, play clever, and master craps the proper way!
Dice and dice games date back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is approximately one hundred years old. Current craps formed from the 12th Century English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody knows for sure the ancestry of the game, however Hazard is believed to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It’s presumed that Sir William’s horsemen enjoyed Hazard through a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the castle’s name.
Early French colonists brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 18th century, when displaced by the British, the French moved south and found refuge in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they were driven out of Acadia, they took their favored game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it mathematically fair. It is believed that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which is derived from the term for the non-winning toss of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi riverboats and across the nation. A good many consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In 1907, Winn created the modern craps layout. He created the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he designed the spaces for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.