Vegas odds on Oscar winners for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress

Oscar night is nearly upon us and for those of you planning to have a get together we figured we’d help you dominate in your Oscar pool for the big party.

The peeps in Vegas make it their business to know the odds and so the gambling mecca can be a great source for guesstimating the favorites in the three major categories. Wynn Las Vegas odds maker John Avello laid down his lines and here are the results:

Best Picture
Argo, 1-to-2
Lincoln, 9-to-5
Les Miserables, 9-to-5
Silver Linings Playbook, 30-to-1
Zero Dark Thirty, 35-to-1
Amour, 40-to-1
Life of Pi, 75-to-1
Django Unchained, 125-to-1
Beasts of the Southern Wild, 250-to-1

Best Actor
Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln, 1-to-9
Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables, 14-to-1
Joaquin Phoenix, The Master, 15-to-1
Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook, 25-to-1
Denzel Washington, Flight, 40-to-1

Best Actress
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook, 4-to-5
Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty, 8-to-5
Emmanuelle Riva, Amour, 8-to-1
Naomi Watts, The Impossible, 35-to-1
Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild, 45-to-1

BuzzFeed also did their own calculated metric research and came up with the same three winner predictions.

I guess I better do the “this info is for entertainment and not gambling purposes” disclaimer. The one line that really shocks me is Day-Lewis only being 1-to-9. I’d take that in a heartbeat, believing he’s the safest thing to a lock next to Argo. There’s one big catch that keeps me from taking that Vegas flight, you can’t legally bet on awards shows.

As for my personal picks – I have to say overall Argo was the best film I saw this year and Daniel Day-Lewis was his typically awe-inspiring self. The one outlier I have is the performance from Michelle Williams in Take This Waltz. Williams was mesmerizing, infuriating, subtle, fearless, reckless, enchanting, compromised, adrift in Walker Percy’s malaise and sinfully fallible in its wake… She was freaking terrific and would be my humble pick for Best Actress if only she were nominated.

One additional thought – I hope the Academy Awards learned from this year’s Golden Globes in regards to time constraints. The GGs kept a strict adherence to getting in under a certain amount of time which is fine, but it backfired terribly when at the end they managed this by cutting short the acceptance speeches for the biggest awards. If the Oscars want to manage the clock, keep the earlier speeches short and sweet but for goodness sake never cut off Daniel Day-Lewis!

Who do you think should win?