Craps Strategies

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Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes back to the Crusades, but modern craps is just about one hundred years old. Current craps evolved from the old English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody absolutely knows the ancestry of the game, however Hazard is said to have been created by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the 12th century. It’s believed that Sir William’s knights enjoyed Hazard during a siege on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was acquired from the fortress’s name.

Early French colonizers brought the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when exiled by the English, the French moved south and found sanctuary in the south of Louisiana where they at a later time became known as Cajuns. When they departed Acadia, they brought their favorite game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns broke down the game and made it more mathematically fair. It is believed that the Cajuns altered the title to craps, which was derived from the name of the non-winning throw of 2 in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi river boats and all over the country. A few consider the dice builder John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn developed the current craps layout. He appended the Do not Pass line so players could bet on the dice to lose. Afterwords, he created the spots for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.