Pickup Craps – Hints and Strategies: The Background of Craps
Be clever, play clever, and become versed in craps the right way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is just about a century old. Modern craps evolved from the ancient English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody knows for sure the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is believed to have been created by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It is presumed that Sir William’s paladins bet on Hazard during a siege on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was gotten from the citadel’s name.
Early French colonists brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when driven away by the British, the French moved down south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they at a later time became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they brought their favorite game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it fair mathematically. It’s said that the Cajuns changed the title to craps, which is gotten from the name of the non-winning throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi riverboats and all over the nation. Most acknowledge the dice maker John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn built the current craps setup. He added the Don’t Pass line so gamblers can wager on the dice to not win. At another time, he designed the spots for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.