And the 3-to-1 winner is ...

Will “Brokeback Mountain” win best picture? Will Jon Stewart get booed if he gets political? Will an Oscar winner speak out on the war? You can bet on it.

Really, you can.

YouWager.com, an online bookmaker operating out of Costa Rica, offers these very bets as well as wagers on all the top categories of the Academy Awards.

Betting on events whose outcomes are known before they are announced -- like the Oscars -- is illegal in the United States but not in Europe, Costa Rica or Antigua, and the Internet has given offshore gambling houses access to American pocketbooks. For now, Oscar gambling pulls in pennies not dollars, but according to experts, it’s growing 25% annually and is expected to take in $10 million this year.

“Our clientele are recreational bettors,” says Freddy Harris, who runs the sports book at YouWager.com. “It’s an [industry] expert or self-proclaimed big fan. What you’re really doing is putting your own ego on the line.” But as the volume of betting rises and the stakes go up, Oscar gamblers are becoming increasingly savvy, forcing bookies to become inside-Hollywood sleuths of sorts to stay ahead.

In traditional sporting events such as the Super Bowl, the bookmakers crunch numbers from previous games and make relatively safe predictions. But judging entertainment is a subjective enterprise. Handicapping Oscar means peering into the collective mind of roughly 5,800 industry insiders in search of the Hollywood zeitgeist.

“We have a staff of five betting managers,” says Harris. “Each makes their own odds based on information they get from the Internet, from reading leading critics across the country, and they come up with a composite.”

John Avello, bookmaker for the sports book at Wynn Las Vegas, who sets Oscar odds -- for what he calls entertainment purposes -- pulls his sheet from industry chatter. “We’ve got to look at what the academy is thinking, so I rely on people ... in the loop.”

The smart buzz seems to favor “Brokeback Mountain” for best picture, a prohibitive favorite at 1 to 6 in most markets. But after winning the Screen Actors Guild best picture award, “Crash” has drawn more bets than expected, causing some bookies to adjust their lines.

Ang Lee is the favorite for best director at 1 to 10. “He won the Directors Guild Award,” Avello says. “You want to look at the history of the Directors Guild; 90% have gone on to win the Oscar. And he’s also won the Golden Globes, so I don’t know how you stop this guy.”

In the best actor category, Philip Seymour Hoffman is another prohibitive favorite. “When I first put up the odds,” says Avello, “I had Hoffman 3-1.... Now look at [him] since then: won the SAG, won the Golden Globe, he’s just far, far ahead of this group, so I have him at 1-2 now.”

In the best actress category, the current odds at YouWager.com favor Reese Witherspoon for her role as June Carter in “Walk the Line,” at 2-7, with Felicity Huffman in “Transamerica” a length behind at 4-1.

“The betting markets include information from the pundits,” says professor Leighton Vaughan Williams, director of the Betting Research Unit of Nottingham Business School in England. “If that information is judged to be any good, the markets will pick that up. Those who know the most will bet the most and drive the market to a correct prediction.”

Indeed, online betting exchanges like Betfair and Intrade, which allow visitors to bet directly with one another on future events, have turned the money laid down by gamblers into a potent psychic force. The odds determined by the 65,000 gamblers on Intrade predicted the outcome in every state in the 2004 presidential elections as well as 82% of the Oscar winners in the major categories. The Hollywood Stock Exchange, which allows users to trade virtual money on Academy Awards predictions, reflected Oscar results in 2005 with 100% accuracy.

According to the odds posted recently on YouWager.com, “Brokeback Mountain” will almost certainly win best picture, Jon Stewart will probably be booed for political commentary, but it’s unlikely any Oscar winner will mention the war in Iraq.

Does somebody know something?