Sometimes it’s too much work just to get out of bed, let alone do the research required to make a sharp bet. That’s when you decide to risk a mouthful of chalk and go for the easy button. It won’t get any easier in 2008 than betting on these 10 guaranteed locks (Note: not a guarantee).

USC over Illinois (straight up) at the Rose Bowl
The New England Patriots to win the Super Bowl
Tiger Woods to win the WGC-CA Championship
Justine Henin to win the French Open
Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony’s first child (1-3) to be born with brown eyes
Germany (8-13) to win Euro 2008 Group B
Australia (-200) over England at The Ashes 2009
Ken Livingstone (1-2) to win the London mayoral election
Ronnie O’Sullivan (3-1) to win the World Snooker Championship
Kanye West’s Graduation (1-5) to win the Grammy for Rap Album of the Year

The days of having to sign your life away to join an online casino are long gone. Playing slots online couldn’t be any easier than it is now. It used to be a pain to fill out the profile questionnaire and then wait for a download that would take five minutes to complete. Even once it finished, the games were boring and there wasn’t much of a selection to choose from.

Now there are games you can play that don’t even require a download, you just click and play. There are still player profile questionnaires, but you only fill them out when you play real-money games, and they’re much shorter than they used to be.

There’s also many more banking options these days; we’re no longer limited to just one or two options. Most casinos have at least a half-dozen different ways to buy-in and cash out.

The easiest betting tip there is in craps is to only bet on the Come & Don’t Come or the Pass & Don’t Pass Line bets. Those bets pay even money and the house edge is small, at only 1.4%. If you play the Buy Bets only the 4 and 10 are worthwhile. They reduce the house edge to 4.76%. The house edge for the Place Bets varies from 6.66% to as low as 1.51%.

The other bets give the house a bigger edge. Betting on any Craps pays 7 to 1 but the house edge is 11.11%. The Horn Bet is another to be avoided. It pays 30 to 1 for the 2 or 12 when the true odds are 35 to 1. The 3 and 11 pay 15 to 1 but have true odds of 17 to 1. That’s a 16.66% house edge; stay away from that bet.

A convicted bank robber who isn’t supposed to gamble was recently the lucky winner of a scratch ticket worth $1 million dollars. He may not be so lucky after all. Timothy Elliott faces a court hearing today over whether he violated his probation when he bought the $10 ticket for the $800 Million Spectacular in Hyannis Massachusetts.

After pleading guilty in October 2006 to unarmed robbery for a January 2006 heist at a bank on Cape Cod he was placed on five years probation. Under the terms of his probation it stated that he “may not gamble, purchase lottery tickets or visit an establishment where gaming is conducted, including restaurants where Keno my be played.”

Elliott has collected the first of 20 annual $50,000 checks from the Massachusetts lottery commission.

As a part of his sentence, Elliott 55, was put under the care of the state Mental Health Department and sent to a hospital for treatment, and recently state officials refused to say whether he was still being treated.

The lottery routinely cross references the names of winners with the state Revenue Department but in this case it will be up to the court to determine what will happen with Elliott’s winnings.

What does the court have to say about this? “This is kind of new territory”

Boxing doesn’t have nearly the same influence it did even 30 years ago as America’s preferred gambling sport. As they say, power corrupts. But boxing remains a simple sport to bet, and its tenuous hold on the fringes of mainstream sports encourages the same level of ‘fair play’ that has led MMA out of the wilderness.

This is human combat boiled down to a very simple form: punching the other guy, in the front of the torso and head only. Differences in technology and equipment play a very small role in the ring (but a much larger one during training). As a handicapper, you’re looking for easy-to-spot indicators of the ability to throw and take punches: size, strength, even age.

Attitude doesn’t come up on the tale of the tape, but if you’re not already a student of human behavior, don’t sweat it. Win-loss records reveal a lot about a fighter’s attitude.