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Master Craps – Tips and Plans: The History of Craps
Be cunning, play cunning, and master craps the right way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes back to the Crusades, but modern craps is just about one hundred years old. Current craps evolved from the 12th Century English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the birth of the game, however Hazard is believed to have been invented by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It is theorized that Sir William’s knights wagered on Hazard during a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the fortress’s name.
Early French colonists imported the game Hazard to Canada. In the 18th century, when driven away by the British, the French headed south and found sanctuary in southern Louisiana where they after a while became Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they took their best-loved game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which was derived from the name of the non-winning throw of two in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi barges and all over the country. A good many consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the founder of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn assembled the modern craps setup. He appended the Do not Pass line so gamblers can wager on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he created the boxes for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.