02.07
Become Versed in Craps – Hints and Techniques: The Past of Craps
Be brilliant, play smart, and learn how to play craps the ideal way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Crusades, but current craps is approximately a century old. Modern craps evolved from the ancient English game called Hazard. No one knows for certain the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is believed to have been discovered by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It is theorized that Sir William’s knights played Hazard amid a siege on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the citadel’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when expelled by the British, the French moved down south and located safety in southern Louisiana where they a while later became known as Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they brought their best-loved game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it mathematically fair. It is said that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which is derived from the name of the non-winning toss of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi scows and across the country. Many acknowledge the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In 1907, Winn built the modern craps layout. He added the Do not Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he created the boxes for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.