Craps

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Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is approximately a century old. Current craps developed from the old Anglo game referred to as Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is believed to have been created by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It is supposed that Sir William’s knights enjoyed Hazard amid a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the fortification’s name.

Early French settlers imported the game Hazard to Canada. In the 1700s, when expelled by the English, the French moved south and settled in southern Louisiana where they at a later time became known as Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they took their preferred game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it fair mathematically. It is believed that the Cajuns altered the title to craps, which is acquired from the term for the losing toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi riverboats and throughout the country. Most acknowledge the dice builder John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn designed the modern craps layout. He put in place the Don’t Pass line so players could wager on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he developed the spots for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.