History of Craps

Games similar to Craps date back to as far as the days of the Roman Empire when Roman soldiers used to entertain themselves by rolling pig knucklebones shaped into cubes on their shields. Craps was most probably invented by soldiers, more precisely by Sir William of Tyre and his knights who supposedly came up with a game called Hazard as they were laying siege to a castle called Hazarth (or Azart) during the Crusades in 1125, the name of the castle perhaps misused to give the game a fitting name. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica however, the word Hazard stemmed from the Arabic words “al zar" (or "azzah") meaning“the dice" in translation.

Hazard was then taken to England where it became a very popular game in gambling establishments throughout the country and also the reason for huge fortunes to change their owners overnight. It is however the French who claim to have given Craps its current name as the game started to spread in France by deriving it from the word “Crabs", a French pronunciation of the term meaning the losing throw of two in the game. This hypothesis about the origin of the name of Craps is but rather a story because there is no hard evidence to support it, so the name might just as well have originated in America as Hazard crossed the Atlantic with French or British migrants.

It was in the United States where the game for sure received its current rules and perhaps also its current name. Craps has an interesting and somewhat controversial history in America based on the different sources available. The French, as they moved southwards displaced by British colonists, took the game along. It was in the southern states of America in the early 19th century where Craps is said to have finally been influenced by African Americans to its current name and most of its current rules. This theory is plausible based on the fact that an American slang expression for a crap game (or a dice game) is African Dominoes. Anyway, it remains a mystery if it was the French or the African Americans who played Craps first, there is even a theory that the word “craps" stems from the name Johnny Crapaud given to the French because of their habit to eat amphibians (crapaud being the French for toad).

Later on, sometime in the early 19th century, the New Orleans French immigrant Bernard de Mandeville simplified Hazard further, his version spreading onto the steamboats of Mississippi and later throughout the United States. Unfortunately Mandeville adaptation of Craps did not have perfect rules and made it possible to sway the odds in the game by using crooked dice (also known as percentage dice because they were intentionally corrupted to change the odds in a dice game) until John H. Winn (often referred to as the father of Craps) altered the rules so that the players could bet with the shooter or against him, by introducing the possibility to bet “right" or “wrong" in the layout of the craps table including a space for “don't pass" bets. John H. Winns modernisation of the game transformed it into what we now know as Bank Craps.

Craps was once again very popular with soldiers during the World War II when it became one of their favourite pastimes, the rolling dice seeming to distract them from the hardships of the war.

Nowadays, even though Craps lost some of its popularity in the 1990s to other casino games, interest in the dice game has resurged thanks to its Internet availability.