Learn to Play Craps – Hints and Plans: The History of Craps
Be clever, play cunning, and discover how to play craps the proper way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is approximately a century old. Modern craps come about from the 12th Century English game referred to as Hazard. No one knows for sure the ancestry of the game, however Hazard is said to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It is believed that Sir William’s horsemen wagered on Hazard amid a siege on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was derived from the fortress’s name.
Early French settlers brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when banished by the English, the French moved down south and settled in southern Louisiana where they eventually became known as Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they took their preferred game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which is gotten from the name of the losing toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi river boats and throughout the country. A good many consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In 1907, Winn assembled the modern craps layout. He created the Do not Pass line so players could wager on the dice to lose. Later, he designed the spaces for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.