Master Craps – Tips and Techniques: The History of Craps

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Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is approximately 100 years old. Modern craps developed from the old Anglo game called Hazard. No one absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is believed to have been created by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, in the twelfth century. It’s supposed that Sir William’s knights bet on Hazard during a blockade on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was derived from the fortress’s name.

Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when displaced by the English, the French moved down south and found sanctuary in the south of Louisiana where they eventually became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their preferred game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it fair mathematically. It’s said that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which was acquired from the term for the losing throw of two in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi scows and across the nation. A few think the dice maker John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In 1907, Winn built the current craps setup. He created the Do not Pass line so players could bet on the dice to lose. At another time, he designed the boxes for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.