Craps Tips

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Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is only about a century old. Modern craps developed from the ancient English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody knows for certain the ancestry of the game, however Hazard is said to have been made up by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It’s supposed that Sir William’s horsemen played Hazard amid a siege on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the fortification’s name.

Early French colonists brought the game Hazard to Canada. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French moved south and located refuge in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their favored game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which was acquired from the term for the bad luck throw of two in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi barges and across the nation. A great many consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the creator of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn created the modern craps setup. He added the Do not Pass line so gamblers can wager on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he designed the spots for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.