Be brilliant, play clever, and master craps the correct way!
Dice and dice games date all the way back to the Crusades, but current craps is only about a century old. Current craps developed from the ancient English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is said to have been created by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the 12th century. It is presumed that Sir William’s paladins bet on Hazard during a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the citadel’s name.
Early French settlers brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when driven away by the British, the French relocated down south and settled in southern Louisiana where they a while later became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their best-loved game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns altered the title to craps, which is derived from the name of the bad luck throw of 2 in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi barges and all over the nation. A good many consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In 1907, Winn assembled the current craps layout. He appended the Don’t Pass line so players can wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he invented the spaces for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.