Master Craps – Hints and Techniques: The History of Craps
Be brilliant, play cunning, and master craps the correct way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes all the way back to the Crusades, but current craps is only about a century old. Current craps come about from the ancient Anglo game called Hazard. No one absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is said to have been created by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, in the 12th century. It is presumed that Sir William’s soldiers wagered on Hazard during a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the castle’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French headed south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they after a while became Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they brought their best-loved game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which is derived from the name of the losing throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi scows and across the country. A good many acknowledge the dice maker John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In 1907, Winn designed the current craps setup. He added the Don’t Pass line so gamblers can bet on the dice to lose. Later, he established the spaces for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.