2011 Round 15 Results: Good Enough For Now

The Line Fund dragged itself back into profitability this week, thanks mostly to the Pies' effort in the 1st half of their game and Freo's effort in the 2nd half of theirs. Collingwood also ensured that the Head-to-Head Fund landed the more important of its restrained duo of wagers, thus inching (centimetring?) the Fund a fraction closer to black ink.

In total then, add 3c to Investor Portfolio values to move them back to just under 79c.

Upset wins by the Dogs, Dons and Crows made for a tough week's head-to-head tipping for the Head-to-Head Tipsters, which averaged only 4.7 from 8 for the Round, the 4th-lowest average so far this season. Best amongst them were Home Sweet Home and Silhouette, each scoring 6 from 8, and worst was Easily Impressed I, which was surely unimpressed by its 2 from 8. Combo_NN_1 still leads all Head-to-Head Tipsters, now on 86.5 from 117 (74%), ahead of Bookie Knows Best and Bookie_9 on 85.5. Combo_NN_2 is in fourth on 84.5 and, along with Combo_NN_1, continues to demonstrate the efficacy of neural networks.

Such efficacy extended into margin prediction this week, with Combo_NN_1 recording the round's best MAPE (27.4 points per game) and Combo_NN_2 recording the second-best MAPE (27.6 points per game), performances made all the more impressive by being produced in a round with 4 victories of over 40 points and 2 more, narrower victories by underdogs.

As a result, Combo_NN_1 and Combo_NN_2 now both have sub-30 MAPEs. Bookie_3 still leads all Margin Predictors with a season long MAPE of 27.93 points per game, about 0.8 points per game ahead of Combo_7 on 28.75 points per game, followed by Bookie_9 on 29.24 points per game.

An astute gambler following Combo_NN_2's margin predictions this week would have landed 7 of 8 line bets. Many other Margin Predictors also fared well, so much so that the week's average performance of 4.8 from 8 was the 2nd-highest of the season. Despite these unusually high scores, all but three of the Margin Predictors still have season-long line betting performances of 50% or lower, and only Bookie_3's prognostications would have been the source of profit had they been assiduously followed since the start of the season.

The unexpected demise of Sydney and, to a much larger extent, Geelong, hurt the TAB Sportsbet bookmaker on probability scoring this week, leading to his first negative performance since Round 5. ProPred, WinPred and H2H all recorded positive probability scores for the round, thus closing the gap a little to the TAB Sportsbet bookmaker but without altering the overall ordering.

Meantime the Line Fund algorithm turned in its third successive negative probability score, though only a slightly negative one and due mostly to Geelong's spectacular failure to cover the spread against the Dons.