Be a Master of Craps – Tricks and Schemes: The History of Craps
Be smart, play clever, and pickup craps the correct way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Crusades, but current craps is approximately 100 years old. Modern craps come about from the ancient English game called Hazard. Nobody knows for certain the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is said to have been invented by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It is presumed that Sir William’s horsemen gambled on Hazard through a blockade on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was derived from the castle’s name.
Early French colonists brought the game Hazard to Canada. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French moved down south and found safety in southern Louisiana where they eventually became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they brought their favorite game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which is gotten from the term for the losing toss of two in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi riverboats and all over the country. Many consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn developed the current craps setup. He created the Don’t Pass line so players could bet on the dice to lose. Later, he developed the boxes for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.
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