Pickup Craps – Pointers and Schemes: The History of Craps
Be smart, play smart, and master craps the right way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Crusades, but current craps is approximately one hundred years old. Modern craps come about from the old Anglo game referred to as Hazard. No one absolutely knows the origin of the game, although Hazard is said to have been discovered by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, in the 12th century. It is supposed that Sir William’s horsemen bet on Hazard during a blockade on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the citadel’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when driven away by the British, the French headed south and discovered safety in southern Louisiana where they eventually became Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they brought their preferred game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it mathematically fair. It is believed that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which is gotten from the term for the losing toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi riverboats and across the nation. Many consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the creator of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn assembled the modern craps setup. He created the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could bet on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he developed the spaces for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.
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