Craps Tips

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Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Crusades, but modern craps is approximately a century old. Modern craps developed from the 12th Century Anglo game referred to as Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is said to have been discovered by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, in the twelfth century. It is presumed that Sir William’s soldiers played Hazard during a blockade on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the fortification’s name.

Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Canada. In the 1700s, when driven away by the English, the French headed down south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they after a while became Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it fair mathematically. It’s believed that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which was derived from the term for the bad luck toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi barges and all over the country. A great many consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn designed the current craps layout. He appended the Don’t Pass line so players could bet on the dice to not win. At another time, he invented the spaces for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.