Be smart, play smart, and pickup craps the right way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes all the way back to the Crusades, but modern craps is approximately a century old. Modern craps formed from the 12th Century Anglo game called Hazard. No one knows for certain the ancestry of the game, however Hazard is believed to have been made up by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It is presumed that Sir William’s knights bet on Hazard during a siege on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was gotten from the fortress’s name.
Early French settlers brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when banished by the British, the French headed down south and located sanctuary in the south of Louisiana where they eventually became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they brought their favorite game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it fair mathematically. It is said that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which is acquired from the term for the bad luck toss of two in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi riverboats and across the country. A few consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn assembled the current craps setup. He added the Do not Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he designed the spots for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.