Craps

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Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is just about one hundred years old. Current craps come about from the old English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is said to have been made up by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, in the twelfth century. It is believed that Sir William’s knights played Hazard through a siege on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was gotten from the citadel’s name.

Early French colonists imported the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 18th century, when exiled by the British, the French headed down south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which was acquired from the term for the non-winning throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi scows and throughout the country. A great many think the dice builder John H. Winn as the creator of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn assembled the modern craps layout. He put in place the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to lose. At another time, he invented the spaces for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.