Craps Strategies

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Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but current craps is approximately 100 years old. Modern craps formed from the 12th Century Anglo game referred to as Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the beginnings of the game, however Hazard is said to have been created by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It’s presumed that Sir William’s soldiers gambled on Hazard through a siege on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the citadel’s name.

Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when exiled by the English, the French headed south and found refuge in the south of Louisiana where they eventually became known as Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it fair mathematically. It’s said that the Cajuns changed the title to craps, which is gotten from the name of the losing throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi scows and all over the country. Many think the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In 1907, Winn built the current craps layout. He added the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he developed the spots for Place wagers and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.