20
March
Written by Anahi.
Posted in: Craps
Dice and dice games go back to the Crusades, but current craps is only about one hundred years old. Current craps flourished from the archaic British game titled Hazard. No one knows for sure the ancestry of the game, but Hazard is considered to have been made up by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, in the 1300’s. It is theorized that Sir William’s knights played Hazard for the duration of a blockade on the fortification Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was derived from the fortress’s name.
Early French colonists brought the dice game Hazard to Canada (the colony of Acadia, which is now Nova Scotia). In the 1700s, when displaced by the British, the French relocated south and found sanctuary in the south of Louisiana where they eventually became known as Cajuns. When they fled Acadia, they took their preferred game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns modernized the dice game and developed it to be more mathematically honest. It’s said that the Cajuns altered the name to craps, which was developed from the term for the losing toss of two in the game of Hazard, called "crabs."
From Louisiana, the game moved to the Mississippi river boats and across the country. Many consider the die maker John H. Winn as the father of current craps. In the early 1900s, Winn built the modern craps layout. He included the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could bet on the shooter to not win. Later, he developed the boxes for Place bets and added the Big six, Big eight, and Hardways.
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
