Be brilliant, play clever, and master craps the right way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Crusades, but current craps is just about a century old. Current craps come about from the ancient Anglo game called Hazard. No one knows for certain the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is believed to have been created by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It’s theorized that Sir William’s paladins gambled on Hazard through a siege on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the fortification’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when expelled by the British, the French moved down south and found sanctuary in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they took their best-loved game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which was derived from the term for the losing toss of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi riverboats and throughout the nation. Most think the dice maker John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn developed the current craps layout. He added the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to not win. Later, he established the spaces for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.