Craps

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Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is approximately a century old. Modern craps formed from the old English game called Hazard. Nobody knows for sure the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is said to have been discovered by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It’s believed that Sir William’s horsemen gambled on Hazard during a blockade on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was gotten from the fortification’s name.

Early French colonists imported the game Hazard to Canada. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French moved down south and discovered sanctuary in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they were driven out of Acadia, they took their best-loved game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which is acquired from the term for the losing toss of two in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi barges and across the country. A few think the dice builder John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn built the current craps setup. He appended the Don’t Pass line so gamblers can bet on the dice to not win. At another time, he designed the spaces for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.