History of Craps

Casino Edge examines the history of craps.

Although dice and games involving dice have been around for thousands of years, craps has only been around since the 1800s. Believe it or not, craps is a simplified version of another game, an old English game called hazard, which dates back as far as the Crusades in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. It was slightly altered by French gamblers, in particular by French-American Bernard Xavier Philippe de Marigny de Mandeville, who brought it to America and, in particular, New Orleans.

The only major alteration since then has been the addition of the don't pass bet by John H. Winn. This bet was brought in to stop the casino using fixed dice and altering the shooters' chances. The game was then given the name of "crapaud", which means toad in French, by French settlers in New Orleans.

Craps was always a fixture in Las Vegas casinos but it wasn't until the emergence of casinos in Atlantic City that craps became the universal casino highlight that it is today. When the Atlantic City casinos opened in 1978, there was much more interest in craps than there'd been in Vegas, and the casinos were unprepared for such popularity. This led to an increase in dice tables, and the game still remains extremely popular all over the world.