Be smart, play cunning, and master craps the right way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is only about a century old. Modern craps formed from the old Anglo game referred to as Hazard. No one knows for sure the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is believed to have been created by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, in the twelfth century. It is presumed that Sir William’s paladins bet on Hazard during a siege on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the citadel’s name.
Early French settlers imported the game Hazard to Canada. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French relocated down south and discovered refuge in southern Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which was derived from the name of the bad luck toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi scows and across the country. Many think the dice builder John H. Winn as the creator of current craps. In 1907, Winn built the modern craps setup. He put in place the Don’t Pass line so players can wager on the dice to lose. At another time, he created the spaces for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.