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Hi, I'm Joseph Hickerson, pit manager in a local casino and on behalf of Expert Village,
I am going to give the introduction on how to play casino style craps. The dice are the
oldest form of gambling tools. Dice and games associated with dice can be found all over
the ancient world. The origin of dice can be traced to pre-historic times when medicine
men used bones, sticks and stones, arrow heads to predict the future for their tribes, by
throwing them to the ground and reading the outcome. American Indians used four sided
knuckle bones to create their dice games. In the Arabic language, the word for knuckle
bone and dice means the same thing. This goes to show that dice were popular in the Arab
world for longer than anybody can remember. Maybe that's where we get the term throwing
the bones. Modern looking square dice were found in Egypt and dated back to 600 BC. In
Greek and Roman civilizations, the dice were made of more expensive materials like ivory,
precious stones, gold, silver and porcelain. Roman Emperors Augustus and Nero were devout
dice players. They even tried to cheat at the game. The material for modern casino dice
is made of hard cellulose. The cellulose is transparent to avoid dice loading and sometimes
called perfect dice. The history of dice and dice games is a few thousand years old but
the history of modern day craps is a lot shorter. The direct predecessor of modern day craps
was an English game called Hazard. There is evidence that Hazard was played by the soldiers
in the twelfth century during the third crusade. Today it's believed that the first English
settlers on the Mayflower brought the game to America. English Hazard became really popular
in New Orleans around 1800 where the French called it craps. After that, the rules and
the odds changed many times. One variation became especially popular in gaming houses
at the end of the 19th century. At that time, casino tables had a simple layout. Players
could only bet with the dice or against the house. Finally, John H Winn revolutionized
the game and made it possible for craps players to bet right and wrong. He improved the layout,
drew a space for the don't pass bets and in 1931, gambling was legalized in the state
of Nevada, and casino craps, Las Vegas style, became popular all over the world.