Be cunning, play cunning, and pickup craps the right way!
Dice and dice games date back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is only about one hundred years old. Current craps come about from the 12th Century Anglo game called Hazard. No one absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is believed to have been created by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the twelfth century. It’s theorized that Sir William’s knights wagered on Hazard during a blockade on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the fortress’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when displaced by the English, the French headed south and located refuge in the south of Louisiana where they at a later time became Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their best-loved game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns adjusted the title to craps, which was acquired from the term for the losing throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi river boats and all over the nation. Most consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the creator of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn assembled the modern craps layout. He created the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he established the boxes for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.