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 current craps is only about one hundred years old. Current craps come about from the 12th Century Anglo game called Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is said to have been created by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It’s supposed that Sir William’s knights bet on Hazard through a blockade on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was gotten from the fortification’s name.

Early French settlers brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when expelled by the English, the French moved down south and settled in southern Louisiana where they eventually became Cajuns. When they were driven out of Acadia, they took their preferred game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns changed the title to craps, which was acquired from the term for the losing toss of two in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi scows and throughout the nation. A few consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn assembled the current craps setup. He appended the Do not Pass line so players could wager on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he invented the boxes for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.