Craps Tricks

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Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes all the way back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is approximately a century old. Modern craps come about from the 12th Century English game called Hazard. Nobody knows for sure the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is said to have been made up by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, around the twelfth century. It is believed that Sir William’s paladins played Hazard amid a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the fortress’s name.

Early French colonists imported the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 18th century, when driven away by the British, the French headed south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they a while later became known as Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they took their best-loved game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it mathematically fair. It is said that the Cajuns changed the title to craps, which was acquired from the name of the bad luck toss of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi scows and across the country. Many consider the dice maker John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn developed the current craps layout. He created the Don’t Pass line so players could wager on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he designed the boxes for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.