Billionaire Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, knows jackpots. He hit his big one in 1999 when he swapped the dot.com he had founded for over $5 billion in Yahoo stock. Earlier this month, in a Dallas Morning News column, Cuban graciously shared some of his jackpot know-how -- and, in the process, gave cubicle America an unusual glimpse into how corporate life operates inside top executive suites.

Our contemporary CEOs, Cuban related, can't lose, mainly because they take the bulk of their pay in stock, either as options to buy company stock at some future date or as outright grants of company shares. Year after year, ever more shares pour into executive pockets. If the price of these shares should rise, even slightly, CEOs can do spectacularly well.

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