Craps Strategies

Read more about the
Las Vegas 2024 Super
Bowl Streaker!

Be brilliant, play clever, and become versed in craps the correct way!

Games that use dice and the dice themselves date all the way back to the Crusades, but modern craps is just about 100 years old. Modern craps formed from the old English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, however Hazard is said to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It is presumed that Sir William’s knights bet on Hazard amid a blockade on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the citadel’s name.

Early French settlers brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 18th century, when driven away by the British, the French moved south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became known as Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they brought their favorite game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it more mathematically fair. It’s said that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which is derived from the term for the non-winning throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi barges and throughout the country. A few think the dice maker John H. Winn as the creator of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn assembled the modern craps setup. He added the Don’t Pass line so players could wager on the dice to not win. Later, he designed the spaces for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.