Be brilliant, play clever, and master craps the correct way!
Dice and dice games goes all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is only about a century old. Current craps evolved from the ancient Anglo game called Hazard. Nobody knows for sure the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is said to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It’s supposed that Sir William’s soldiers played Hazard during a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was gotten from the fortification’s name.
Early French settlers imported the game Hazard to Canada. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French moved south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they eventually became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they brought their best-loved game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it more mathematically fair. It is said that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which was derived from the name of the bad luck throw of two in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi riverboats and all over the country. Many consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn designed the current craps setup. He put in place the Don’t Pass line so gamblers can wager on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he designed the spots for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.