If you’ve only got a buck to bet you’ll want to find a good wager to place it on. The best bets in a casino are a poker game, if you have some skill, but a dollar won’t be any good at a poker table. You could bet your dollar at the mini-baccarat table, if you can find one with stakes that low.

Betting it on the come/don’t come or pass/don’t pass will give an almost even chance to win, with the casino only getting a house edge of 1.4% or less. Also the 6 or 8 bet on the craps table carries only a 1.52% edge for the house.

Even a hand of blackjack is a good bet if you know basic strategy. The house will hold a little more than 4% on you, but that can be diminished greatly if you can learn to count cards properly.

Summertime can be pretty slow for betting on sports. Same thing for reality television. The lone offering at press time was for one of the top-rated summer shows in any TV genre, the fourth season of the American version of So You Think You Can Dance.

Although the competition is very much like American Idol (it was co-created by Simon Fuller himself), the format introduces enough luck to trip up even the best dancers. The show started with 20 contestants – 10 male, 10 female. Then they were paired off; in some tandems, one dancer is clearly better than the other, but the home viewers are supposed to vote for their favorite couple. Having to draw a dance style out of a hat can also spoil the day for someone who happens to be weak in that one style but strong otherwise.

So will the winner be male (-110) or female (-130)? You make the call.

Figuring out who’s going to win Wimbledon hasn’t been this difficult in a while. Roger Federer is still the king of the grass-court tournaments, but his dominance over the sport has waned to the point where he’s very beatable on other surfaces. Federer’s five-year winning streak at SW17 will come to an end at some point. This year, however, the Swiss sensation is 4-7 to add yet another piece of silverware to his trophy case.

Things are a lot more difficult in the women’s draw. Justine Henin, already not at her best on grass, has retired from the sport. New No. 1 Ana Ivanovic lost to Zheng Jie in the third round; Maria Sharapova lost the day before, leaving four-time winner and defending champion Venus Williams as the top favorite at 7-4. Her two-handed backhand is perfect for the grass court, mitigating the power advantage of players like her sister Serena (9-4).

Business is a bit slow this summer – at least on the futures market, where there was just one wager on tap at press time. But it’s a doozy, and it should be of particular interest to the online community: Will Jerry Yang lose his title as CEO of Yahoo! by July 31? “No” is the big favorite at –800.

In 1994, Yang co-founded (along with David Filo) what was originally called “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web.” Fourteen years later, Microsoft offered to pay $44.6 billion for it. Yahoo! declined, saying the offer was too low. Now stocks in Yahoo! are sliding, and disgruntled shareholders are putting the pressure on Yang to find another buyer. Time Warner and News Corp are the usual suspects.

The question for bettors is whether anything will happen by the end of July. That seems unlikely, especially with the company reorganizing ahead of its annual general meeting on Aug. 1.

The NBA Finals are going back to Boston. Barely.

The Los Angeles Lakers survived two separate rallies by the Celtics Sunday night to win 103-98 and force a Game 6 in their best-of-seven series. That’ll take place Tuesday at the Garden, which gives Lakers coach Phil Jackson one day to figure out how to get through to his players. They’ve dropped the cash in each of the first five games.

Boston has outworked and outplayed the Lakers for much of this series. During the regular season, the Celtics had the best record in the league (66-16) and the best defense (96.2 points allowed per 100 possessions). Top-flight defense requires an incredible amount of energy and focus. The Lakers have shown that at times, but not without a disappointing number of mental breakdowns on their part.

The idea of “deserving” to win is a dangerous one, but Boston comes closest to fitting the bill. We’ll find out later this week.

We’re down to five contestants in the popular reality TV series Hell’s Kitchen 4. The winner gets to be a “senior sous chef” at one of Gordon Ramsay’s top restaurants – not quite as sexy as the “executive chef” position that earlier press releases had described, but it still beats flipping burgers.

Bobby Anderson, who is already an executive chef in Niagara Falls, was the favorite at press time at 11-10. Brooklyn’s Corey Earling is a very close second at 6-5; Christina Machamer of St. Louis has fallen to third at 2-1 after losing some of the confidence Ramsay showed in her earlier.

One of the difficulties in projecting a winner is that Ramsay can apply, ignore or change the rules at his discretion. The “Red vs. Blue” format was thrown out the window in the previous episode, when all six remaining chefs at the time were lumped together into the “Black” team. Is Vince McMahon running this show?

Betting on Big Brown in the Belmont Stakes may not be the sure thing it was in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. As strong as Big Brown has been, the Belmont Stakes is a mile and a half long, and horses with a pedigree for distance usually win this race. Big Brown was bred for strength but not stamina, and most of his ancestors had short careers of only three or four races. He also has hoof problems, and developed a small crack on one of them this week.

The other issue is the odds he’s getting. At 2/7 it takes a healthy wager to make any serious profit. Casino Drive has caught the attention of race books, and is only getting 4/1 odds to win. He’s bred for distance and is coming off a long rest going into the Belmont. Like Big Brown, he’s undefeated thus far.

By a whopping 12 million votes, David Cook beat the younger David Archuleta to become the winner of American Idol Season 7. After last night’s performances I honestly didn’t think that Cook had done enough to sway the voters but apparently the minds of the millions of voters had already been made and they were standing by their man — David Cook.

Following a grueling two-hour finale, complete with flashbacks, musical guests (George Michael!) and numerous performances by the season’s competitors/losers Ryan Seacrest at long last announced David Cook the winner…and I was at a loss for words. For once (or maybe the second time in the show’s history) the American public picked a true winner. Archuleta has a great voice to be sure, but he lacked soul and personality. But Cook has the voice, the personality, the charisma and the class.

It’s about damn time, people. You’ve finally picked an Idol worthy of a successful career in the music industry. Thank you.

They defeated the Senators, Rangers and Flyers to get this far. Now the Pittsburgh Penguins have just one more team standing between them and the first Stanley Cup in the Sidney Crosby Era.

We’re just not sure who that opponent is going to be yet. It figures to be the Detroit Red Wings; however, after going up 3-0 in the best-of seven Western Conference Final, Detroit coughed up a pair of games to the Dallas Stars. Odds for Monday’s Game 6 had yet to be posted as press time, although the Wings figure to be slight road favorites, as they were in Game 3.

Provided the Red Wings advance, they’ll be the Stanley Cup favorites. But from a value standpoint, it will be difficult to ignore the Penguins and all their talent, from Crosby up front to Marc-Andre Fleury in goal – he shut out the Flyers Sunday for his third bagel of the playoffs.

Didn’t I bet you a buck David Cook would be a finalist?

After Wednesday night’s elimination show where Seyesha Mercado got the boots (surprise, surprise), the only two American Idol hopefuls standings were the two Davids (surprise, surprise).

In one corner you’ve got the very young (as in only 17 years old young) David Archuleta, who has done a fairly good job at impressing the judges. But Archuleta has scored huge points with the younger audience and that could give him a slight edge. In the other corner you’ve got 25-year-old David Cook, who has bowled the judges over on several occasions and has managed to win the hearts of young women all across America.

To their credit, both Davids have shown incredible composure and consistency as they’ve progressed through this competition.

“I’ve always looked up to Cook and admired all the work he’s done with his talent,” Archuleta said when asked what he thought of the other David. “To be here standing next to him is just unbelievable.”

“I consider it a huge honor to share the stage with the kid. He’s the real deal,” Cook said in return about the younger David. “All the buzz coming in, he deserves.”

Archuleta won a coin flip taped after Wednesday’s show and chose to sing second for the final show. Statistically, the first contestant up has been referred to as a “jinx.”

The winner of American Idol Season 7 will be announced live on May 21 during the show’s final episode.