You can’t go through the supermarket checkout line without bearing witness to the never-ending phenomenon that is Angelina Jolie’s baby bump. Inquiring minds want to know: Is Brangelina preggers? What will the child be named? What about twins?

The  celebrity props list is here to take your bets. Last month, People quoted a “source close to the couple” that claimed another child is on the way. As long as Jolie delivers by the end of the year, we’ve got action.

Unless someone out there has some inside information (literally), it’s all too easy to bet “No” on twins at –300. According to the Rush University Medical Center, 31 twin births occur per 1,000 women in the United States. You likewise might want to steer away from betting on triplets at 200-1; according to Hellin’s Law, you square the odds for each additional child in a multiple birth. That’s roughly one in a thousand for triplets.

They’re not quite giving away free money, but it’s close. Most sportsbooks offer tantalizing bonuses to new customers: free plays, bonus earnings (25 percent, for example) on the first play, doubling your initial deposit, and so on.

We certainly wouldn’t refuse an offer like that – provided we really want to do business with that book in the first place. If you sign up with a less than reputable book just to grab a quick bonus, you might not get any return at all, even if you win your bet.

You also have to win your bet to collect just about all the kinds of bonuses there are on the betting market; 25 percent of nothing is still nothing. Even if you win your bet and earn your bonus, the bookies figure they’ll make that back in vigorish every time you place a wager. As long as you’re playing, the book gets its vig.

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.

The best tip you could have received for NBA betting before the season began was to bet it all on the Celtics right from the start. But since the time machine hasn’t been perfected yet, you’ll have to do your homework to make some profit on your NBA bets the rest of the way. You can still keep dumping money on the Celtics, but Boston has since failed to cover the spread for the first time this season and fell to Orlando Sunday.

One factor you can take advantage of in NBA betting that doesn’t exist in the NFL is lengthy opposite-coast road trips. In the NFL teams play one week and get at least six days off before playing again. In the NBA fatigue can become a big factor when an east-coast team heads west, or a west-coast team heads east. Most coast-to-coast trips aren’t for just one game, and during a two- or three-game road trip across the country, the second or third game can be real tough on the visiting team. Give the schedule a closer look, find the teams making the cross-country journey, and try betting against them. It will often pay off.

Jeff Gordon is leading the Chase for NASCAR’s Nextel Cup with just four races left to go. He’s the overwhelming favorite at 1-4 to win the Cup for the fifth time in his career. A foregone conclusion, right?

Of course not. Teammate Jimmie Johnson (3-2) is just 53 points behind, and he took the checkered flag at last week’s Subway 500 – Gordon finished third. The win gives Johnson seven on the season, compared to six for Gordon. He could make it eight this Sunday at the Pep Boys Auto 500; the race takes place at Atlanta Motor Speedway, where Johnson won in March to record his fifth Top-3 result in eight appearances.

Fifteen points separate first and second in NASCAR, so if Johnson wins four straight, he wins the Cup. More likely, one poor showing by Gordon would make things even; he has four results outside the Top 10 in his last 10 races. It definitely could happen.

There’s no denying the popularity of parlays. Sports lotteries across the world use them, including countries where gambling is supposedly illegal. Just don’t expect fair odds from the government.

Instead, check out our parlays. You can pick anywhere between two and 12 outcomes, with odds ranging from 2.6-1 on two-team combos to 600-1 for the full 12-pack. You can even take a cross-sport parlay – perhaps you’re a New York fan who cashed in Sunday on both the Giants and Yankees.

Sharp handicappers tend to limit their parlaying to two outcomes, often playing the pointspread and the total on the same matchup. There are strategic situations where it may make sense to parlay rather than make two separate bets; for example, taking a heavy favorite and the “over.” For the favorite to cover at all, there will have to be some points on the board. Your parlay is already well on its way to cashing in.

In today’s world, there are no bad decision makers, only sick people.

Mental health officials in the Western world generally consider both problem gambling and excessive Internet use to be Obsessive Compulsive Disorders. But the combination of the two is too potent for at least one country. Israel’s Superior Court ruled earlier this summer that gambling websites targeting its citizens as customers are illegal, no matter where in the world the companies are registered.

Dr. Pinhas Dannon of Tel Aviv University claimed in a recent Online Casino News report that Internet addiction should be classified alongside other “extreme” disorders associated with gambling, sex, and kleptomania. Dannon believes Internet addiction requires the same treatment as these other severe addictions.

The article doesn’t state what treatments the Israeli psychiatrist would recommend. Whatever they are, perhaps both Dr. Dannon and his country’s lawmakers should take the time to watch A Clockwork Orange. They might learn something.