Craps History

Dice games have been in existence for at least two thousand years, with evidence existing that dice games were being enjoyed as far back as during the time of Roman Empire.  Soldiers used the bones of sheep and pigs, shaped them into cubes and threw them in a game to pass time in camp; this is assumed to be the foundation of the phrase “roll them bones”.

Originally it is thought that dice were employed as an aid in fortune telling to help in decision making.  Over time, in part due to dice no longer being made use of to tell the future, the symbols on the dice have changed from their initial symbols into the ones we see on modern dice.

With everything this ancient the record of how it changed is muddy and various thoughts have been proposed over the years.  A common theory has the game of craps originating in a pastime played by Arabs prior to the period of the Middle Ages known as Azzahr.  After a time the game appeared in France where it was known as Hasard, sometime around 1500 the game made it across the English Channel where it acquired the English spelling Hazard.  Formal regulations for Hazard had been made by the early 1700’s.

French settlers delivered the game over the Atlantic into New France (Quebec and part of Nova Scotia).  After the French lost to the English in the new world lots of French settlers from Nova Scotia left Canada and migrated south ending up in Louisiana there they established themselves.  The French settlers continued to play Hasard but over time started to name the game Crebs or Creps, their way of spelling the French Crabes (The smallest possible value in the game was called Crabs by the English and Crabes by the French.  Before the year 1843 the Cajun name had evolved into Craps in American English usage.

Craps migrated west as the frontier migrated west and is now enjoyed all over America in addition to being enjoyed in the rest of the world.  The 2  familiar types of craps played today are “Bank Craps” and “Street Craps”; however a new type of web-based craps “Online Craps” growing in popularity.  Conservative figures of 30 million are quoted when discussing the quantity of U.S. citizens that play dice games yearly.