Think Kurt Vonnegut's death was a surprise? Not to four of the teams competing in an online betting pool called Cash4Cadavers.com; they all knew his number was up this year. How about Anna Nicole? Three teams earned points for her passing. While the idea of a death pool may seem sick and degrading, they've actually been around for hundreds of years. Before you judge, it's better to first understand how the morbidly intriguing Cash4Cadavers site works.

Individuals or teams sign up by supplying a list of 20 celebrities they think will perish this year. An entrance fee of $20 is required for all submitted death rosters. Team names must be chosen and most select skillfully sinister tags like "Abra-Cadaver," "Bereave it or Not," and "Please Sir, Can I Have Some Morgue?". Once the rosters are submitted, players just sit back and wait for - well, people to die. God, it feels dirty to type that.

Point value for a given celebrity is determined by the total number of teams divided by the number of teams who have the celebrity multiplied by 100; the person with the most points at the year's end wins the jackpot. In the event of a tie (these people are serious), the team with the celeb who died first in the calendar year wins. With 123 teams this year, the jackpot is $2,460; quite a load of cash, if you can deal with the guilt of how you won it.

While most of the rules are straightforward, Cash4Cadavers does have some caveats. Celebrities must be bona-fide celebs, determined by American non-catgorically-specific media sources; i.e. if your celeb's obit appears in the Associated Press, you're all set, but if it shows up in Field and Stream and nowhere else, you're out of luck. A few other rules apply: The McVeigh Exclusion states that scheduled executions do not count; The Pol Pot Predicament clarifies that celebs who are currently MIA can be played, but if they turn up dead, their official time of death must fall within this year's roster; and the Siam Caveat explains that conjoined twins only count as one entry.

So go check out their website for yourself, or act offended and pretend you're not going to because it's so immoral and disgusting (only to be compelled by your morbid curiosity). But either way, take a look. You probably won't be glad you did. You'll probably just feel guilty for looking. But, like a car wreck, you just won't be able to stop staring.