Master Craps – Tricks and Strategies: The History of Craps

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Dice and dice games date back to the Crusades, but modern craps is just about 100 years old. Modern craps evolved from the old English game called Hazard. No one absolutely knows the origin of the game, however Hazard is said to have been made up by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It is supposed that Sir William’s paladins bet on Hazard during a blockade on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was acquired from the fortress’s name.

Early French colonists brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French headed south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they at a later time became Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they brought their favorite game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which was derived from the term for the non-winning toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi riverboats and across the nation. A good many consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn designed the current craps layout. He appended the Don’t Pass line so players could wager on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he created the boxes for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.