Be a Master of Craps – Hints and Schemes: The History of Craps
Be cunning, play brilliant, 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 a century old. Current craps developed from the 12th Century English game called Hazard. No one absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is believed to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, in the 12th century. It is supposed that Sir William’s soldiers gambled on Hazard through a blockade on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was gotten from the fortress’s name.
Early French colonists imported the game Hazard to Canada. In the 18th century, when displaced by the British, the French moved south and found safety in the south of Louisiana where they eventually became known as Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they took their preferred game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it more mathematically fair. It is believed that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which was gotten from the name of the non-winning toss of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi barges and across the country. A few think the dice maker John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn created the modern craps setup. He added the Do not Pass line so players could wager on the dice to lose. At another time, he designed the spaces for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.