The History of Craps
So where did it all begin, this game of craps? We are all familiar with the game thanks to its popularity in Vegas and more probably Hollywood, but did you know that craps has been around for a long time in various guises?
Dice games have been popular since the times of the Eygyptian Empire(dice have been dug up dating back to around 600 B.C). One strand of historians think that it became popular thanks to the Romans (as was famously said during Monty Pythons Life of Brian- What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us)?
More likely is that it developed from an old game called Hazard (from the Arabic az-zahr which means dice).
Hazard was not only the place where Bo and Duke lived, it was also a game adapted from the Arab world by an Englishman called Sir William of Tyre and his knights, during the crusades. This dice game was played in the British Isles in the 12th century AD. In France they renamed the game crabs (what you call a losing throw of 2 in Hazard) and this then became craps when it became popular in the US, as no one could pronounce crabs and anyway that word has multiple meanings. So basically craps is an Arabic game, which is not that suprising as that was such a numerate part of the world.
French settlers in the south of the US played Hazard frequently and it became big among African Americans in the early 19th century.
The game jumped over in to the gambling river boats on the Mississippi and then back out to the rest of the United States until someone called John Winn further developed the game so that you could bet with the shooter or against him. This cancelled out the advantage of playing with crooked dice which was a widespread problem at the time.
Now of course, craps is the biggest betting game in the world by wagers and its Internet cousin online craps is one of the most popular betting games on the net. Who knows what the next evolution will be, but safe to say we will be seeing and hearing about craps for a long time to come.