Be clever, play smart, and become versed in craps the proper way!
Dice and dice games goes all the way back to the Crusades, but modern craps is just about a century old. Current craps evolved from the ancient English game called Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the birth of the game, but Hazard is said to have been created by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It’s presumed that Sir William’s knights gambled on Hazard through a blockade on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was acquired from the castle’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when driven away by the British, the French moved south and located sanctuary in the south of Louisiana where they at a later time became Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they took their preferred game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns altered the title to craps, which is derived from the name of the bad luck toss of two in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi barges and throughout the country. A few consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In 1907, Winn built the current craps layout. He appended the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he created the spaces for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.