Be brilliant, play clever, and pickup craps the proper way!
Dice and dice games date back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is approximately a century old. Current craps evolved from the 12th Century English game called Hazard. Nobody knows for certain the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is said to have been discovered by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, around the twelfth century. It’s theorized that Sir William’s horsemen enjoyed Hazard during a blockade on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was derived from the castle’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when banished by the English, the French relocated south and discovered safety in the south of Louisiana where they at a later time became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they brought their preferred game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it fair mathematically. It’s said that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which is gotten from the term for the non-winning toss of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi river boats and throughout the nation. A few consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In 1907, Winn designed the modern craps setup. He appended the Do not Pass line so players could wager on the dice to not win. Later, he developed the boxes for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.
