Be clever, play cunning, and become versed in craps the correct way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Crusades, but modern craps is just about a century old. Modern craps evolved from the old English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody knows for sure the ancestry of the game, but 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 horsemen bet on Hazard through a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was derived from the citadel’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 18th century, when expelled by the English, the French moved south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they were driven out of Acadia, they brought their favorite game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it mathematically fair. It is said that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which is acquired from the name of the losing toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi riverboats and across the country. A few consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the creator of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn built the modern craps setup. He put in place the Don’t Pass line so gamblers can wager on the dice to lose. Later, he established the boxes for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.