Be clever, play smart, and master craps the right way!
Dice and dice games date all the way back to the Crusades, but modern craps is just about 100 years old. Modern craps evolved from the 12th Century English game called Hazard. No one absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, however Hazard is said to have been created by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, in the twelfth century. It’s theorized that Sir William’s paladins enjoyed Hazard through a siege on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was gotten from the castle’s name.
Early French colonists brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 18th century, when exiled by the British, the French relocated south and settled in southern Louisiana where they at a later time became Cajuns. When they were driven out of Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it fair mathematically. It is believed that the Cajuns changed the title to craps, which is derived from the name of the losing toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi barges and across the nation. Most think the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn developed the modern craps layout. He appended the Do not Pass line so players could wager on the dice to not win. At another time, he invented the spaces for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.