Craps

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Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is only about a century old. Modern craps come about from the 12th Century English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is said to have been created by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, around the twelfth century. It’s theorized that Sir William’s knights gambled on Hazard amid a blockade on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was derived from the fortress’s name.

Early French colonists imported the game Hazard to Canada. In the 1700s, when expelled by the British, the French moved south and located safety in southern Louisiana where they at a later time became Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it fair mathematically. It’s believed that the Cajuns changed the title to craps, which was gotten from the term for the losing toss of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi riverboats and across the nation. A few consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn developed the modern craps setup. He created the Don’t Pass line so gamblers can wager on the dice to lose. At another time, he established the spots for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.