Master Craps – Tricks and Plans: The History of Craps
Be clever, play brilliant, and discover how to play craps the correct way!
Dice and dice games goes back to the Crusades, but modern craps is just about a century old. Modern craps evolved from the old English game referred to as Hazard. No one absolutely knows the birth of the game, although Hazard is believed to have been invented by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It is theorized that Sir William’s soldiers bet on Hazard during a blockade on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the citadel’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Canada. In the 1700s, when banished by the British, the French relocated down south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they after a while became Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they took their best-loved game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns changed the title to craps, which is derived from the name of the losing toss of two in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi river boats and throughout the country. Most consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the founder of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn created the modern craps setup. He appended the Do not Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to not win. Later, he designed the boxes for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.