History of Craps

Dice games have been around for well over two millennium, with evidence existing that dice games were being enjoyed as long ago as in the time of Roman Empire.  Roman troops enjoyed dice games employing dice created out of the bones of sheep and pigs to kill time while at camp; this use of pig and sheep bones is thought to be the source of the saying “roll them bones”.

The first use of dice is believed to use them as a fortune telling utility to help with making a decision.  Over a long period the symbols have developed into the numbers we see now, also the purpose of dice to help predict future events is a thing of the past.

Anything this old has a fuzzy history and as such the roots of Craps have a few thoughts .  One hypothesis about the origins of the game has that it is an adaptation of a game enjoyed by Arabs for 1000′s governing years called Azzahr.  After some time the game appeared in France where it was renamed Hasard, and around the year 1500 the game made it across the English Channel and the name was changed to the English spelling of Hazard.  The game developed over a period and by the early 1700’s recognized rules of play where established.

French settlers delivered the game across the Atlantic into New France (Quebec and part of Nova Scotia).  After the French lost to the English in the new world many French settlers from Nova Scotia left Canada and migrated south ending up in Louisiana where they established themselves.  The French settlers still played Hasard but over time started to name the game Crebs or Creps, the Cajun way of spelling the French Crabes (The smallest achievable denomination in the game was referred to as Crabs by the English and Crabes by the French.  Not later than 1843 the Cajun name came into American English as Craps.

Craps migrated west as the frontier migrated west and is now played all over the U.S. as well as being enjoyed in the rest of the world.  There are two types of craps offered “Street Craps” and “Bank Craps” in addition to a third kind, an web-based form becoming popular known as “Online Craps”.  Conservative figures of 30 million are quoted when discussing the number of Americans that play dice games yearly.