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.

The NFL, by virtue of being the most popular sport to gamble on in North America, can also be the toughest to handicap. Games are few and lines are tight. But there is still a solid advantage to be gained against the betting public.

Myths persist about football despite the relatively smart mainstream coverage and analysis the NFL enjoys. The casual fan continues to divide the sport into “skill” and “non-skill” positions, overvaluing the contributions of the running backs and the wide receivers compared to the offensive linemen and the safeties. Many football analysts in the public eye look more like casual fans than experts.

You can make a healthy profit on NFL games by taking this knowledge gap into consideration. Teams missing starting players on their offensive lines or in the secondary are stronger fade candidates; those missing big-name “skill” players are more attractive if they have competent, no-name back-ups.

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.

Most of us have heard of David Blane, the celebrity status street magician.  If only we could have him be our good luck charm the next time we hit the roulette table.

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.

This is one hell of a field. The nine horses who will participate in the Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Classic at New Jersey’s Monmouth Park have been announced, and Lawyer Ron is the slight favorite coming out of the 1-hole at 5-2.

If you believe the man who set the morning line at Monmouth, Lawyer Ron has the least value of the top contenders. “It was very difficult to separate the first three horses,” Brad Thomas told the Associated Press. The other two horses in question are Street Sense and Curlin, each at 3-1.

All of a sudden, Any Given Saturday has some value at 4-1. He was the cheval du jour after taking August’s Haskell Invitational at Monmouth, one of three straight wins heading into the Classic. But fifth favorite Hard Spun might be even more compelling at 8-1 after beating Street Sense at the Kentucky Cup Classic last month. There will be no easy choices among this quintet.

So it’s the Colorado Rockies versus the Boston Red Sox. Piece of cake for handicappers, right? Actually, it could be.

Normally, I’d flippantly tell you to go ahead and bet the underdog. But then the Red Sox reeled off three wins in a row to run the favorites to 14-10 for a very mild profit of 0.54 of a unit. Boston was favored all three times on the moneyline – very slightly in Games 5 and 6, as it turned out.

Boston has carried the chalk in every single game of the playoffs, home and away, and figures to do so again in the World Series. And the Sox seem to have done it with just one consistent starter: Josh Beckett, supported by a killer batting order. Forgive me for busting out an old-school stat, but David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez and Kevin Youkilis are each hitting .400 or better. The Rocks have their work cut out for them.

Even before Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s MLB career home-run record, people were looking forward to the day when someone less controversial would take the crown. Far and away the most likely candidate among active players is Alex Rodriguez.

Rodriguez went into Tuesday’s action with 503 home runs. This is his 14th season in the majors, and he’s playing just as well in 2007 as he did in his breakthrough 1996 campaign. A-Rod has stayed healthy, and shows no signs of slowing down at age 32.

Bonds is still hitting home runs, but if you plug A-Rod’s numbers into the Bill James “Career Assessments” tool, you’ll come up with a 30 percent chance for Rodriguez to reach the 800-homer plateau. At least, that’s what I came up with – the tool’s instructions are a bit fuzzy. But more important than some record, it projects six more years of A-Rod goodness. Enjoy.