Learn to Play Craps – Tricks and Tactics: The History of Craps
Posted in Craps on 08/21/2025 03:25 pm by Donovan
Be cunning, play smart, and master craps the right way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Crusades, but modern craps is only about 100 years old. Modern craps formed from the old English game referred to as Hazard. No one knows for certain the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is believed to have been invented by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the twelfth century. It is supposed that Sir William’s horsemen played Hazard through a siege on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was derived from the fortification’s name.
Early French colonizers imported the game Hazard to Canada. In the 18th century, when driven away by the English, the French headed down south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they at a later time became Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they brought their preferred game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which was derived from the term for the bad luck toss of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi scows and all over the country. A few consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In 1907, Winn built the modern craps layout. He created the Do not Pass line so players can wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he developed the spaces for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.