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Be clever, play clever, and become versed in craps the right way!

Games that use dice and the dice themselves date back to the Crusades, but modern craps is just about a century old. Current craps come about from the ancient English game referred to as Hazard. Nobody knows for certain the birth of the game, although Hazard is said to have been discovered by the Englishman, Sir William of Tyre, around the twelfth century. It is presumed that Sir William’s soldiers gambled on Hazard through a siege on the fortress Hazarth in 1125 AD. The title Hazard was derived from the citadel’s name.

Early French colonists imported the game Hazard to Nova Scotia. In the 1700s, when banished by the English, the French relocated down south and located safety in southern Louisiana where they a while later became known as Cajuns. When they were driven out of Acadia, they took their preferred game, Hazard, with them. The Cajuns streamlined the game and made it more mathematically fair. It is said that the Cajuns changed the name to craps, which was derived from the term for the bad luck toss of two in the game of Hazard, referred to as "crabs."

From Louisiana, the game migrated to the Mississippi riverboats and all over the nation. Many acknowledge the dice builder John H. Winn as the father of modern craps. In the early 1900s, Winn designed the current craps setup. He created the Don’t Pass line so gamblers could bet on the dice to not win. At another time, he established the spaces for Place bets and put in place the Big 6, Big 8, and Hardways.

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