Master Craps – Hints and Strategies: The History of Craps
Posted in Craps on 09/16/2026 11:25 am by Donovan
Be clever, play cunning, and discover how to play craps the proper way!
Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Crusades, but current craps is approximately 100 years old. Current craps developed from the ancient English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody knows for certain the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is believed to have been discovered by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, in the 12th century. It’s presumed that Sir William’s soldiers wagered on Hazard through a blockade on the citadel Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the citadel’s name.
Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French relocated down south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they brought their favored game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it fair mathematically. It’s said that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which is derived from the name of the bad luck toss of two in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi barges and all over the nation. A few acknowledge the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn created the current craps layout. He added the Do not Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to not win. Later, he created the spaces for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.