Soldiers in the Roman Legions used to shave down pig knuckles into the shapes of cubes, and toss them onto their inverted shields as a form of entertainment while in camp. Hence we get the term "to roll the bones". We do know that the game we know today as "craps" came to the United States from Europe.

In this system, you raise your bet one unit if you lose and lower it one unit if you win, which means your winning bets will be higher than your losing bets. It would look like this in practice: 1, lose and go to 2, lose and go to 3, win and drop to 2, lose and go to 3, lose again, bet 4, win, bet 3 ad infinitum. It looks attractive, but the end result is the same: you will eventually lose your money. A ten loss series would have you down 55 units and you would have a helluva time getting out of that hole.