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Dice and dice games date all the way back to the Crusades, but modern craps is approximately 100 years old. Modern craps formed from the ancient English game referred to as Hazard. No one absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, although Hazard is believed to have been created by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, in the twelfth century. It’s believed that Sir William’s paladins enjoyed Hazard through a blockade on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was derived from the citadel’s name.

Early French colonists brought the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when displaced by the English, the French moved south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they at a later time became Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s believed that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which was derived from the term for the losing toss of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi riverboats 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 modern craps layout. He added the Do not Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to not win. Later, he developed the boxes for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.