Be brilliant, play cunning, and pickup craps the correct way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is only about 100 years old. Current craps evolved from the old Anglo game called Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the beginnings of the game, but Hazard is believed to have been discovered by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It’s theorized that Sir William’s knights enjoyed Hazard through a siege on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the fortress’s name.
Early French settlers imported the game Hazard to Canada. In the 18th century, when driven away by the British, the French headed south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they took their best-loved game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns altered the title to craps, which is acquired from the name of the bad luck throw of two in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi scows and across the nation. Many think the dice maker John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn developed the modern craps setup. He appended the Don’t Pass line so players can wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he created the spaces for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.