Be brilliant, play cunning, and pickup craps the correct way!

Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Crusades, but current craps is just about a century old. Modern craps formed from the ancient English game called Hazard. No one absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, however Hazard is said to have been created by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It’s theorized that Sir William’s soldiers gambled on Hazard during a siege on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the fortress’s name.

Early French settlers imported the game Hazard to Canada. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French headed down south and discovered safety in southern Louisiana where they eventually became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they brought their preferred game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it fair mathematically. It is believed that the Cajuns altered the title to craps, which is derived from the name of the non-winning throw of two in the game of Hazard, recognized as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi river boats and across the nation. A few acknowledge the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In 1907, Winn assembled the current craps layout. He put in place the Do not Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to lose. Later, he established the spaces for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.