Gambling Trivia - The History Of Craps And Dices By Slotland.

Back before the Middle Ages, the Arabs played a game using little numbered cubes, called az-zahr - meaning the die. The game showed up across the Mediterranean in France, where it was named hasard, then jumped the English Channel to England some time before 1500 AD where it was given the English spelling of the same word, hazard. The roll of lowest value in that game was called crabs. The French, trying to be amiable, adopted that term from the English, but spelling it the French way as crabes. In the early 1700s, the game crossed the Atlantic to the French colony of Acadia, where a surprise awaited it and those who played it.

In 1755, the French lost their colony, Acadia, to the English who promptly renamed it Nova Scotia and chucked out the French-speaking Acadians, who roamed around a bit and finally relocated in Louisiana, where they were called (as they still are) Cajuns, and developed a language called Louisiana French. They still played the good old dice game, but dropped the title of hasard and called the game simply crebs or creps - their spelling of the French crabes.

By 1843, the Cajun word came into American English as craps. People were apparently careful for a while not to omit the final "s" for fear of confusion with a vulgarism having a totally different meaning - also derived from French, but that's another story.

By 1885, such expressions as craps game, craps table, and craps shooter were found to be just too finicky and used up too much spit, so the final "s" was dropped where it served no useful purpose as in composites like craptable, crapshooter, crapgame, etc., and retained where it refers only to the game (game of craps) or the losing roll (he craps out, he rolled craps) or where it would be too hard to pronounce (she crapped out, rather than she crapsed out).

To prevent some numbers from occurring more frequently than others, dice used in craps games in Las Vegas are manufactured to a tolerance of 0.0002 inches, less than 1/17 the thickness of a human hair.

The State of Nevada first legalized gambling in 1931. At that same time, the Hoover Dam was being built and the federal government did not want its workers (who earned 50 cents an hour) to be involved with such diversions, so they built the town of Boulder City to house the dam workers. To this day, Boulder City is the only city in Nevada where gambling is illegal. Hoover Dam is 726 feet tall and 660 feet thick at its base. Enough rock was excavated in its construction to build the Great Wall of China. Contrary to old wives' tales, no workers were buried in the dam's concrete.

Despite the outcry from some anti-gambling lawmakers over the explosion of gambling on the Internet, fewer than one percent of American adults had used the Internet for gambling within the year of 1999.

Zeus, Hades and Poseidon are said to have split the Universe by sharing heaven, hell and sea with the throw of dice; Roman soldiers played the Christ's tunic with dice at the bottom of the Cross. During antiquity, Greek and Roman nobilities went to spas to rest their body and enjoy time with games. With the expansion of the Roman Empire, so did the spa towns and their intrinsic gambling activities. From the Middle Ages to the 18th century, gambling activities moved from the exclusive spa resorts to become part of the social life of the urban rich and famous. Governments then started to regulate all gaming activities to preserve the-man-in-the-street's solvency they relied upon. Card games and dices were particularly "en vogue" at that time.

Source: Slotland's Newsletter


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