Craps

Read more about the
Las Vegas 2024 Super
Bowl Streaker!

Be smart, play clever, and discover how to play craps the proper way!

Games that use dice and the dice themselves goes back to the Middle Eastern Crusades, but modern craps is approximately 100 years old. Current craps evolved from the old English game referred to as Hazard. No one absolutely knows the birth of the game, however Hazard is said to have been invented by the Anglo, Sir William of Tyre, sometime in the 12th century. It is believed that Sir William’s horsemen gambled on Hazard through a siege on the castle Hazarth in 1125 AD. The name Hazard was derived from the citadel’s name.

Early French settlers imported the game Hazard to Acadia. In the 1700s, when exiled by the British, the French moved down south and settled in the south of Louisiana where they at a later time became Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they brought their preferred game, Hazard, along. The Cajuns modernized the game and made it fair mathematically. It’s said that the Cajuns adjusted the name to craps, which was acquired from the term for the non-winning throw of snake-eyes in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game extended to the Mississippi scows and all over the nation. Many acknowledge the dice maker John H. Winn as the creator of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn designed the current craps layout. He appended the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could wager on the dice to not win. Afterwords, he developed the spaces for Place bets and added the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.