More of a trick of the GCC compiler, but you can give branch indication hints to the compiler (common in the Linux kernel)
#define likely(x) __builtin_expect((x),1)
#define unlikely(x) __builtin_expect((x),0)
see: http://kerneltrap.org/node/4705
What I like about this is that it also adds some expressiveness to some functions.
void foo(int arg)
{
if (unlikely(arg == 0)) {
do_this();
return;
}
do_that();
...
}