Learn to Play Craps – Pointers and Techniques: The Past of Craps
Be cunning, play smart, and master craps the right way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Crusades, but modern craps is approximately one hundred years old. Current craps developed from the old English game referred to as Hazard. No one knows for sure the birth of the game, although Hazard is believed to have been created by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the twelfth century. It’s presumed that Sir William’s paladins bet on Hazard during a siege on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was gotten from the fortification’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when displaced by the English, the French moved down south and located safety in southern Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they brought their favored game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which was derived from the term for the non-winning throw of 2 in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi riverboats and across the nation. A few consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn designed the modern craps setup. He appended the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to lose. At another time, he established the spots for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.