Pickup Craps – Pointers and Techniques: The History of Craps
Be smart, play cunning, and pickup craps the right way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Crusades, but current craps is approximately 100 years old. Modern craps formed from the old English game called Hazard. No one knows for certain the origin of the game, but Hazard is said to have been made up by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the twelfth century. It is supposed that Sir William’s horsemen wagered on Hazard amid a blockade on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was gotten from the citadel’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French headed south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they eventually became Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they took their favored game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns altered the title to craps, which was acquired from the term for the bad luck throw of two in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi scows and throughout the country. A good many consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the creator of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn created the modern craps layout. He added the Do not Pass line so players could bet on the dice to lose. Later, he invented the spots for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.