Pickup Craps – Pointers and Strategies: The Background of Craps


[ English ]

Be cunning, play clever, and master craps the correct way!

Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is approximately a century old. Modern craps come about from the old English game referred to as Hazard. No one absolutely knows the birth of the game, but Hazard is said to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It is theorized that Sir William’s horsemen enjoyed Hazard through a siege on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the citadel’s name.

Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French moved down south and found sanctuary in southern Louisiana where they eventually became known as Cajuns. When they were driven out of Acadia, they brought their preferred game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it more mathematically fair. It is said that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which is gotten from the term for the losing toss of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi scows and across the nation. Many consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the creator of modern craps. In 1907, Winn developed the modern craps setup. He appended the Do not Pass line so players can wager on the dice to not win. Later, he created the spots for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.

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