Craps Tips

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Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is only about 100 years old. Current craps formed from the 12th Century Anglo game called Hazard. Nobody knows for certain the ancestry of the game, however Hazard is believed to have been made up by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It’s believed that Sir William’s horsemen bet on Hazard amid a blockade on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the fortress’s name.

Early French settlers brought the game Hazard to Canada. In the 1700s, when displaced by the British, the French moved south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became known as Cajuns. When they were driven out of Acadia, they brought their preferred game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns changed the title to craps, which is gotten from the term for the losing throw of 2 in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi scows and across the nation. Most consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn designed the modern craps setup. He appended the Don’t Pass line so gamblers can wager on the dice to not win. Later, he developed the spots for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.