Craps

Read more about the
Las Vegas 2024 Super
Bowl Streaker!

Be brilliant, play brilliant, and master craps the right way!

Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes back to the Crusades, but current craps is approximately 100 years old. Modern craps evolved from the ancient English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody knows for sure the origin of the game, but Hazard is said to have been discovered by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the 12th century. It is theorized that Sir William’s horsemen enjoyed Hazard through a blockade on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was acquired from the castle’s name.

Early French colonists brought the game Hazard to Canada. In the 18th century, when displaced by the English, the French relocated south and discovered sanctuary in southern Louisiana where they at a later time became Cajuns. When they left Acadia, they took their favorite game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns simplified the game and made it more mathematically fair. It is believed that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which was derived from the name of the non-winning toss of 2 in the game of Hazard, known as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi scows and across the country. Most acknowledge the dice builder John H. Winn as the founder of current craps. In 1907, Winn created the current craps layout. He added the Don’t Pass line so gamblers can wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he developed the spaces for Place wagers and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.