Craps

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Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Crusades, but modern craps is only about a century old. Current craps come about from the 12th Century Anglo game called Hazard. No one knows for sure the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is said to have been created by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It is supposed that Sir William’s paladins bet on Hazard during a blockade on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was gotten from the fortification’s name.

Early French colonists brought the game Hazard to Canada. In the 18th century, when exiled by the British, the French moved south and found safety in southern Louisiana where they at a later time became Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they brought their best-loved game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it mathematically fair. It is said that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which is gotten from the name of the non-winning toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi barges and across the nation. A few think the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn created the current craps setup. He added the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he invented the spaces for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.