Pickup Craps – Tips and Techniques: The History of Craps
Be clever, play brilliant, and master craps the right way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes all the way back to the Crusades, but modern craps is just about a century old. Modern craps come about from the ancient English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the beginnings of the game, but Hazard is believed to have been discovered by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It is believed that Sir William’s paladins wagered on Hazard during a blockade on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the castle’s name.
Early French settlers brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 18th century, when driven away by the British, the French moved south and found refuge in southern Louisiana where they at a later time became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their best-loved game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it fair mathematically. It’s believed that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which is gotten from the term for the bad luck throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi riverboats and across the country. A good many acknowledge the dice builder John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn assembled the current craps layout. He appended the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could bet on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he designed the spots for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.