Crabs, Craps or the Alleycats Game

6 February 2025

By Royal Flushes

CINDY: I make no bones about it; I am a craps fan big time. If the casino could only keep one game, for me that game would be craps.

ABBY: Me too. It is the most exciting game in the house.

CINDY: From what I understand, the game has an interesting history in America. It started as a Southern game called “crabs” and was played in the small towns along the Mississippi River. Mostly, players would book the games themselves but there were enterprising men (and maybe a woman here and there) who banked the game a lot. In fact, that was their career paths.

ABBY: How did the game of “crabs” become the game of “craps?” That’s interesting. The game slowly made its way North but Northerners did not understand the Southern dialect and thought the game was called “craps” and that is what it finally became known as.

CINDY: In the bigger cities of the North many people called it the “alley game” or the “Alleycats game” because people played it in the alleys. It was during World War II that craps gained a solid foothold on the men of America because the soldiers played poker and craps. That solidified the game in the national consciousness and when casinos came to be inside them was the game of craps.

ABBY: One of the famous sayings of the game was “Baby needs a new pair of shoes,” and that would indicate that many poorer players enjoyed the game too. Probably to their chagrin.

CINDY: There is some evidence that the game was originally a British game called Hazzard that migrated to America. Games evolve the way everything evolves I guess and they move from here to there. They do get changed and certainly Hazzard changed in its new home to become its own game.

ABBY: The quintessential American game.

CINDY: When the casinos started to sprout in Las Vegas and other areas of the country, craps became the number one table game fueled by all those World War II guys.

ABBY: It stayed that way until the card counting book, “Beat the Dealer” by Edward O. Thorp, was published in the 1960s. Then blackjack took its place as the number one table game and has remained number one until this very day.

CINDY: I guess you could say that the second craps revolution came about when Frank Scoblete shared the Captain’s views about dice control, a possible way to get a real edge at the game of craps. It seems to be in a solid second place in the table-game world.

ABBY: So here we have a game that was a solid Southern favorite that then evolved in the North, changing its name, and then spread throughout the world during a world war.

CINDY: And that my dear friends is the origin, as best we know it, of the game of craps.

ABBY: And baby might still need a new pair of shoes!