Pickup Craps – Tips and Techniques: The Past of Craps
Be brilliant, play clever, and learn how to play craps the correct way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is approximately a century old. Modern craps developed from the old English game referred to as Hazard. No one absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is said to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, in the twelfth century. It’s supposed that Sir William’s paladins gambled on Hazard through a blockade on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was derived from the fortification’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Canada. In the 18th century, when expelled by the English, the French headed south and settled in southern Louisiana where they eventually became Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they brought their preferred game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns changed the title to craps, which is acquired from the name of the losing toss of two in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi river boats and across the nation. Many consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In 1907, Winn designed the current craps layout. He added the Do not Pass line so players could wager on the dice to not win. Later, he developed the boxes for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.